Following up on the Politico’s discovery that some of the 300 economists touted as endorsing John McCain’s economic plan hadn’t read it and don’t support it, Nico Pitney and Sam Stein of the Huffington Post decided to dig deeper. They sent e-mails to about half of these dismal scientists questioning their attitude toward McCain and his platform, and a fifth of those responded.

Seems a lot of “McCain’s economists” aren’t all that supportive, with his “gas tax holiday” proposal and his first-term balanced budget pledge (the central point of his “plan”) earning widespread mockery.

You can read it all, but my favorite response was from Peter J. Van Blokland of the University of Florida, who said he didn’t support making Bush’s tax cuts permanent, didn’t support the gas tax holiday, didn’t support the balanced budget pledge and hadn’t, in fact, endorsed McCain. Other than that, I guess, he’s a pretty solid member of McCain’s economic team.

Combined with yesterday’s over-the-top repudiation by McCain of his top economic advisor, Phil Gramm, it appears this hasn’t been a great week for McCainomics.