I’m sure there’s medication for whatever Stacy McCain’s got. So please hit his tip jar so he can afford some.

Ha. I kid. There’s no medication for what Stacy McCain’s got.

Ha. I kid. A nice long rest might be just what McCain needs. In a nearly unheard-of (I kid again) bout of told-you-so-ism, McCain writes:

Just ask yourselves, Perrybots, what might have been possible if some other candidate — any other candidate, perhaps one who could remember how to count to three – had an extra $20 million to spend here in Florida.

I may or may not meet his standard for a “Perrybot.” I was on the Perry bandwagon. Then I got off. Then I ran alongside it, ready to grab hold and swing back aboard. I never quite gave up on him until he officially dropped out.

So regardless of his definition, I think I qualify, and will therefore respond.

One need not be a “Perrybot” to see the logical fallacy McCain is making. To wit: “if Rick Perry hadn’t entered the race, somebody else would have gotten that $20 million.”

I dunno what’s in that pile, but it smells.

Short answer: no, neither Rick Santorum, nor Herman Cain, nor Michelle Bachmann, nor Thaddeus McCotter would have received that $20 million. A small proportion of it, perhaps. I’m speculating, but it seems likely that other candidates would also have received some of it. Therefore whatever financial impact this fictional Perrylessness might have had would be distributive in nature, and thus zero.

No impact.

But even so, those sans-Perry contributions wouldn’t have added up to $20 million. Much of it was contributed only because Perry was the candidate. For McCain to speculate that this $20 million existed and was in play regardless of Perry’s candidacy, and that this $20 million would have made Rick Santorum competitive pre-Florida (or, perhaps, kept Herman Cain competitive post-scandal) is ridiculous.

Without Perry, that $20 million doesn’t enter the race in the first place. And even if it does, it doesn’t coalesce around a second- or third-tier candidate.

That’s like my 12-year-old thinking he gets a second piece of cake because his older brother isn’t home for dinner.

I think what McCain is trying to say is: if only one real conservative could have run from Day 1, then that real conservative could have cornered the real conservative vote, and we wouldn’t be stuck looking at Obamacare’s ancestor maybe getting the GOP nod.

Well, okay. Like I needed another reason to be happy that Paul Ryan never got in the race. Or Bobby Jindahl. Or Mitch Daniels. Or Scott Walker. Or Chris Christie. Or Sarah Palin, I suppose. Because those guys would have just mucked it up and split the conservative vote even worse for the one real conservative who was supposed to slap Mitt Romney down.

Feh. Oh, one more thing. McCain also wrote:

And you still refuse to admit that you were misled…

Because I wasn’t.

…and helped mislead others…

Because I didn’t.

…into jumping aboard that hopeless Bandwagon to Loserville. And who warned you, huh?

“What I fear will happen is that Perry will spend several months sucking up media oxygen and burning through GOP donor cash, only to collapse early next year. This will have the effect of suffocating other conservative candidates, and thereby lead to … Romney 2012.”

Wrote that August 9. Perry’s failure was entirely predictable.

So was Rick Santorum’s. And Herman Cain’s. And…oh, who the hell ran under the Libertarian ticket last time? You know, the lifelong GOPer who jumped parties after he couldn’t hack it in the primary and was going to Teach Those RINOs a Lesson?

Him too.