From Will Thomas at the Huffington Post, McCain is looking for brave volunteers to help him ctrl-v his way into the White House:

Help spread the word about John McCain on news and blog sites. Your efforts to help get the message out about John McCain's policies and plan for the future is one of the most valuable things you can do for this campaign. You know why John McCain should be the next President of the United States and we need you to tell others why.

Select from the numerous web, blog and news sites listed here, go there, and make your opinions supporting John McCain known. Once you've commented on a post, video or news story, report the details of your comment by clicking the button below. After your comments are verified, you will be awarded points through the McCain Online Action Center.

While I'm intrigued by the mental image of a McCain Online Action Center (two out of those four words don't traditionally evoke thoughts of McCain), I'm a little more curious about the guidelines - or lack thereof - that McCain's campaign is offering to the Fighting 101st Keyboard Brigade.

The page offers today's "Talking Points" - a grand total of 2 - that offer strong, issue-based heartfelt support such as:

John McCain will put the national interest ahead of partisanship, he will work with anyone who sincerely wants to get this country moving again. If John McCain is elected President, the era of the permanent campaign will end. The era of problem solving will begin.

While its bland, false, and as deep as dew, its not patently offensive. Its a standard copy/paste comment page white noise example, but its not revolting. In fact, its a lot better than the anti-Democratic hit pieces I've seen, at least on a "using your inside voice" level.

But why there are absolutely no rules or recommended guidelines for people that don't want to copy and paste the same two messages all day? After all, these "talking points" are only recommended - and the campaign doesn't offer any guidelines whatsoever about freelance commenting. It does say that you have to report each comment so it can be reviewed before you get your Super Action Election Megacenter points, but nothing giving any information on what exactly qualifies as something you would or would not get approved for. Its irresponsible enough to make me wonder if its a legitimate oversight, or if the McCain campaign just has no idea what its potentially endorsing.

At the very least, this demonstrates a couple things about McCain heading into the General Election:

- Someone's a trifle concerned about how to harness this Internet thingie.
 - There's either a lack of legitimate commenters willing to boost McCain on Conservative blogs (there's a massive list of those, with only 4 moderate blogs and 1 liberal one - Daily Kos)...or there's too many online McCain supporters not behaving in a manner especially flattering to images of McCain's base.
 - Bizarre statements about putting the country ahead of partisanship (nice track record on that John) is exactly how McCain wants to target that nasty "issues" problem that keeps cropping up in polling.
 - My McCain Online Funtime Action Center broke and the spinning World Domination Map fell over and snapped off the arm from my Karl Rove Politikin' Action Figure, and I had to toss the whole thing in the trash.