McCain is frozen by condom question

Poor John McCain. He used to have so much fun aggrivating right-wingers. Now that he has to kow-tow to them, he's all off his game. Here's the Washington Post's campaign blog:

More questions: Do condoms stop sexually transmitted disease?

A long pause.

A stern look.

"I've never gotten into these issues or thought much about them," he said, almost crying uncle. "Obviously, we all want to stop the spread of AIDS. Everybody wants to do that. What's the most viable way of doing that?"

Well? The reporters asked?

In a last ditch attempt to rescue himself, McCain told an aide to go get a briefing paper prepared by Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, a doctor, who he said has been advising him on "these issues." But the aide couldn't find the briefing paper. "We've lost it," McCain mumbled.

"Whether I support government funding for them or not, I don't know," McCain said about contraceptives. He then said he'd look into it for the reporters, who finally let him off the hook and moved onto other subjects again.

A different account of what appears to be the same incident can be found here (HT: Sullivan, who also links to a YouTube video the "Protestant condom speech" from Monty Python's Meaning of Life.)