I Guess Keeping Haley Barbour Happy…

Is more important than staving off total economic collapse.

Oh, sure, McCain might just have flip-flopped and decided to debate tonight when he realized his gambit had failed.

But I think something else happened. I think Mississippi governor and big-time GOP lobbyist Haley Barbour made it clear to McCain that he would be rather unhappy if the debate–in which Mississippi has already invested millions–didn’t go off as planned.

After all, McCain’s is the campaign run by and for big-time lobbyists. McCain would rather lose a debate and crash the economy than lose the goodwill of a lobbyist like Haley Barbour.