Feds seize Washington Mutual in largest bank failure in U.S. history.

If Palin loses, can we all go back to admitting the Cold War is over?

It seems like McCain’s decision to parachute into the bailout negotiations has finally brought about consensus.

It is no small irony that after years of being at odds with the right wing of his own party, John McCain is staking his campaign for the presidency on it.

During the late afternoon meeting at the White House (a meeting which was McCain’s idea), McCain sat silently at the table until nearly the end, according to a Hill source who was briefed on the meeting. At that point, I’m told, McCain vaguely brought up the proposal being pushed by the Republican Study Committee, the group of House conservatives that is bucking the GOP leadership. But McCain didn’t offer any specifics and didn’t necessarily advocate for the plan, according to the Hill source.

Responding to McCain, Treasury Secretary Paulson said that the RSC proposal was unworkable, my source says, at which point McCain didn’t really advocate for it or state his own position. The meeting adjourned soon after, amid confusion over where negotiations could go next.

Democrats were incensed. “It sounds like Sen. McCain has sided with the House Republicans who want to start with a completely different approach,” Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) told Reuters later, after being briefed on the meeting.

The McCain campaign this evening issued a statement denying he had torpedoed the negotiations, but it’s not just McCain’s behavior at the meeting that suggests he’s sided with House conservatives.

As The Hill reports, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, presaged the day’s events when he told reporters that he’d had breakfast with McCain’s advisers on Wednesday morning and talked by phone with McCain Wednesday night:

“We would prefer a loan or supplying insurance,” Bachus told reporters. “These are the ideas Sen. McCain tried to maximize. He feels strongly we have to design a program where taxpayers won’t lose.”

In fact, House conservatives did float a mortgage insurance proposal today, though it’s exact outlines were apparently a mystery to Democrats and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson alike.

McCain also met during the day with Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), but I’m told that Boehner is ready to sign off on the plan negotiated by Paulson and the Democrats — he simply doesn’t have control over his caucus (although other reports place Boehner as aggressively leading the charge).

This evening on Fox, McCain spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer was surprisingly solicitous of the arguments put forward by House conservatives:

You kind of have the Administration talking to the Democrats in Congress but maybe not working as closely as they should have with the Republicans. … I don’t know why people are shocked that that’s how it played out tonight. …

The conservative Republicans have been very, very focused on taxpayer protections, and one thing that Sen. McCain has been clear on from the beginning is that that’s absolutely essential. …

So McCain’s gambit to shake up the election by “suspending” his campaign and returning to Washington to hammer out a deal at a big White House meeting ends up killing at least for now the hastily negotiated bailout plan that Treasury and Congress had hammered out. Strangely, almost inexplicably — or maybe just desperately — McCain has thrown his lot in with the same conservatives who see him as the perfect example of what is wrong with their party. Strange days indeed.

As we’ve been reporting, John McCain’s attack ads have remained up on the air across the country as late as this evening. And now it turns out that his campaign has instructed TV stations around the country to start airing them again starting on Saturday. In other words, McCain’s ads may actually disappear from the air for a few hours on Friday.

At this point it looks like the only thing that got cancelled is McCain’s much ballyhooed suspension of his campaign was the appearance on David Letterman.

Polls show McCain’s lead slipping, and within the margin of error, in Florida and Missouri. That and the day’s other political news (did someone say debate?) in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

John Harwood on CNBC: McCain will own any market sell-off today.

Dow dropped 130 points in first two minutes of trading …

Would you trust John McCain to run a small or medium sized business?

Slate predicts McCain’s next 10 Hail Mary stunts.

(My fave: “Challenges Obama to suspend campaign so they both can go and personally drill for oil offshore.”)

Ed Rollins dissects the motives of the House Republicans who McCain is siding with to derail bailout plan: