Davis: McCain blew up bailout

On that Acorn call, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis also credited McCain with "blowing ... up" the first bailout package when he suspended his campaign to come to Washington, something McCain's campaign had heatedly denied at the time.

Davis expressed outrage that, "in the middle of the greatest disaster in our financial system that we’d had in our lifetime, that the Democrats in the United States Senate would actually link payments to ACORN in the bailout package that they promoted -- prior to Sen. McCain coming to town and actually blowing that package up. So we can actually say that in addition to saving taxpayers millions of dollars, and we’re very happy that no more taxpayer dollars were added to the pile of money going to ACORN."

After the initial bailout package failed, McCain's aides blamed Obama:

"This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country," adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin said

House Republicans had opposed the possibility that government profits from the deal would go to a housing fund for local authorities that could then be spent through ACORN, and those are the grounds on which Davis seemed to credit McCain.