New Republican ad begs Obama to stop campaigning for jobs legislation

The Republican National Committee launched a new ad Tuesday criticizing the president's bus tour through North Carolina and Virginia this week as taxpayer-funded campaigning. The ad, titled the "Debt-End bus tour," features a montage of members of the media describing the president's push for his jobs and tax reform packages as campaign-style.

Look who's unhappy about President Obama taking his jobs bill message to the American public:

And John McCain, apparently still bitter about having gotten his ass handed to him in 2008, joins the RNC's lame attack:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Tuesday ripped again into President Barack Obama’s three-day bus tour that’s winding through two swing states, accusing his former foe of an unprecedented level of campaigning on taxpayers’ dollars. [...] “Never do I believe any of us have seen the kind of activity that the president has engaged in, and all of it being charged to the taxpayers of America,” McCain said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “That’s wrong. That’s the wrong thing to do.” Evoking his failed run for the presidency three years, ago, McCain noted that he “didn’t need a bus to be paid for and built by the government and the taxpayers of the United States.”

Sure, President Obama is just like McCain in 2008, except for the part about how Obama's the president, and as such, has unique travel travel requirements. Maybe it would make for a great photo op to put the president on Greyhound or put him on a Southwest Airlines flight, but as long as he's commander-in-chief, that's not going to happen, nor should it. No matter how cranky McCain or his Republican Party gets, every president before Obama (including GOP hero George W. Bush) and every president after Obama will do the exact same thing.

Moreover, Barack Obama isn't trying to win votes—he's trying prod Republicans like John McCain into getting off their collective behind in order to pass legislation to help grow the economy. While Republicans are fighting for jobs for themselves, President Obama is fighting for jobs for Americans.

Clearly, McCain and his fellow Republicans don't like seeing President Obama taking his message to the public. They are afraid of what will happen as voters learn what they've been up to since taking back control of the House. They'd love nothing more than for Obama to return to D.C. and give up the fight for jobs legislation, because they just want to sit on their hands without getting challenged for doing nothing. But until they stop blocking progress on a jobs bill, that's exactly what President Obama will continue to do.

And of course, McCain thinks this was a much wiser use of public funds: