Dude, you're losing ABC...that's like FOX-lite. That's not going to keep the base motivated.

When even McCain's Media points out that the Straight Talk Express has derailed, you know you have some problems.

Transcripts below the fold

CHARLIE GIBSON: And with apologies for our technical difficulties, we're going to turn back to the difficult economy, and the way the presidential candidates are dealing with it, particularly John McCain. Here's David Wright.

DAVID WRIGHT: John McCain was against the government bailout of AIG, before he was reluctantly for it. Here he was yesterday on "Today."

JOHN MCCAIN: We cannot bail AIG or anybody else. We have to work through it.

WRIGHT: Asked about the same topic today on "Good Morning America" -

MCCAIN: I don't think anybody I know wanted to do that. But there are literally millions of people whose retirement, whose investments, whose insurance were at risk here. And they were going to have their lives destroyed.

WRIGHT: Senator McCain appears to have changed his tune on regulation in a fundamental way. Today on the stump, he's a champion of reigning in Wall Street with tough regulations.

MCCAIN: We're going to put an end to the reckless conduct, corruption and greed that have caused a crisis on Wall Street.

WRIGHT: But for more than 25 years in the Senate, McCain has fashioned himself as a champion of smaller government, less regulation.

MCCAIN: I am less government, less regulation, lower taxes, et cetera.

WRIGHT: In the mid 1990s, he supported a measure to ban all new government regulations. McCain supported legislation a decade ago that broke down the firewalls between commercial and investment banks and insurance companies -- the very rules companies like AIG exploited to get in the current mess. And as recently as March of this year, after the collapse of Bear Stearns, McCain was all for deregulating Wall Street.

MCCAIN: Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital.

GEORGE WILL: When the deregulation was the wave through Washington, he surfed that wave. Now it's not, and the populist inside John McCain is out.

WRIGHT: Today, the Wall Street Journal accused McCain of selling out his free market ideals. Said today's top editorial -- "denouncing greed and Wall Street, isn't a growth agenda,"

WILL: It's a conversion of convenience, some will say.