Sen. John McCain yesterday continued to play up his hard-line opposition to Russia's assault on Georgia yesterday. Fox News reported that in Pennsylvania yesterday, McCain "said he'd just spoken with the embattled president of the Republic of Georgia," adding that McCain said, "I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him today we are all Georgians."

Fox added that in an interview, "McCain suggested the US did not adequately recognize Russia's threat." McCain said, "I'm not sure that we did. Obviously I did and I said they shouldn't stay in the G8. And I said that I thought that Vladimir Putin was most interested in restoring the old Russian empire."

The CBS Evening News briefly noted that McCain "said the Russian invasion was meant to send a signal to nations that are friendly to the West. Barack Obama, vacationing in Hawaii, put out a statement repeating his call for Russia to stop its attacks."

The Washington Post notes McCain's "rhetoric has become increasingly sharp. On Tuesday, he called Russia an unrepentant combatant against a 'brave little nation' and compared Russian 'killing' in the 'tiny little democracy' to Soviet aggression during the Cold War era." Meanwhile, Obama, vacationing in Hawaii, "has confronted the crisis in Georgia in more modulated tones, initially sounding closer to Bush than McCain, but later condemning the Russian aggression in strong terms, saying there was 'no possible justification' for it."

McCain is seen as having an advantage on the issue by many in the media. The Los Angeles Times says the Georgia war "has given McCain another stage" to tout his longer foreign policy resume. McCain "has visited Georgia several times and has been friendly with" President Mikheil Saakashvili. The AP adds that the issue "plays to what polls show is his strength: national security."

The issue also plays into a longer term interest of McCain's. In a piece titled "John McCain's Long War On Russia," The Politico reports that "while virtually every other world leader called for calm in Georgia last Thursday morning," McCain "did something he's done many times over his career in public life: He condemned Russia. ... Obama, Bush and others made their shifts in tone as the brutal, disproportional nature of Russia's response began to become clear. But McCain's confrontational stance on the Caucasus crisis stems from a long, personal skepticism of Russian intentions, one that dates back to the Cold War and which eased only briefly in the early 1990s."

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