McCain Godwins Campaign, Withdraws from Race

Washington D.C. (Reuters) - In a turn of events that has left the 2008 Election in turmoil, John McCain has withdrawn from his Presidential campaign under pressure from the Federal Elections Committee following his comparison of Barack Obama to Hitler.

"This is not something I relish doing or I wanted to have happen," said McCain in a terse speech to assembled members of the media, "but the law is the law, whether it's Gravity or Godwin's, and I am forced to step aside."

McCain's withdrawal from the campaign comes mere hours after a television ad that ran in several media markets drew fire from the entire spectrum of the political establishment. The ad shows several still pictures of Barack Obama giving his, now famous recent speech in Berlin with a caption and a voiceover saying "You know who else the Germans liked? That's right: Hitler."

The ad was immediately brought to the attention of the FEC who unanimously ruled it a violation of the 1990 Godwin Law. The law imposes severe penalties to individuals who invoke the principle of reducio ad Hitlerum; in the McCain case, that penalty was a forced withdrawal from the race.

The McCain campaign had appeared desperate over the last few weeks, claiming a media bias for Obama. The campaign however, seemed to continue too lose its footing and began running ads claiming that Obama had not visited with US troops while in Afghanistan, that Obama was too much of a celebrity to be President, that Obama liked arugula, or even that he was the father of two black babies.

Former Washington Post columnist Allen Henry says that the pressure "evidently became too much for the McCain Campaign."

"You see all these ads getting more and more bizarre, and you see them basically grasping at straws. Without any real any focused, substantive attack it was obvious that the whole argument was just going to devolve into Hitler and Nazism. It's a shame really."

There's no word today about how this will effect the race for President, although anonymous insiders from the McCain campaign have vowed to fight on without him, calling his departure "a dead weight off our shoulders".

Senator Obama, meanwhile, continues to be awesome.