SAN DIEGO - Sen. McCain took the fight to a new opponent Monday, the “cable monster.”

“Americans have expressed their frustration with the sound bites, the charges back and forth, the cable monster that has to have a news story every hour, the sound bites and the surrogates and all that,” McCain said, taking a slight detour from his prepared speech before the National Council of La Raza–which focused mostly on the economy and immigration.

The presumptive GOP nominee rebuked what some analysts have termed the “A.D.D. election” during his speech, renewing his pitch for Sen. Obama to join him at town hall meetings and allow voters to see a debate on the key issues instead of relying on the sound bite picked out by the press.

“I think Americans deserve better. I think Americans deserve a side-by-side appearance of both of us,” he added, even though McCain has also recently acknowledged that the prospect of joint town halls is essentially zero after what he sees as a lackluster response from the Obama campaign.

In attacking the 24-7 media environment, McCain is also partly pushing back on recent criticism he has faced for being “off message.” A number of media outlets ran stories at the end of last week arguing that his intended message on the economy was overshadowed by misstatements made by the candidate and his surrogates on birth control, social security and Iran, among others.

Though most of those gaffes were short snacks for the hungry ‘cable monster’ and are likely to have little long-term impact, former Sen. Phil Gramm, a leading McCain economic adviser, served up a three-course meal when he referred to the economic woes as a “mental recession” and called Americans “whiners.” The campaign had to schedule an impromptu press conference on Thursday where McCain forcefully rebuked Gramm as out of touch with voters and his message.

The Arizona Senator made a veiled reference to the incident today when he added that voters don’t pay attention to “surrogate” gaffes that are played repeatedly on the 24-hour networks.

“Times are tough…and Americans don’t want to hear the sound bite, they don’t want to hear the misstatement, they don’t want to hear the surrogate who may have made a mistake. They want to know about us,” McCain added.