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It Becomes Obvious John McCain Should Just Pack it Up, and I Grow Sad

John McCain better respond to this, and fast.

Headline: "Democrats say McCain nearly abandoned GOP"

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was close to leaving the Republican Party in 2001, weeks before then-Sen. Jim Jeffords (Vt.) famously announced his decision to become an Independent, according to former Democratic lawmakers who say they were involved in the discussions.

In interviews with The Hill this month, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and ex-Rep. Tom Downey (D-N.Y.) said there were nearly two months of talks with the maverick lawmaker following an approach by John Weaver, McCain’s chief political strategist.

The strongest allegations come from Daschle...

Daschle said that throughout April and May of 2001, he and McCain "had meetings and conversations on the floor and in his office, I think in mine as well, about how we would do it, what the conditions would be. We talked about committees and his seniority … [A lot of issues] were on the table."

But the story gets murky as it goes on.

Daschle stressed that McCain never considered becoming a Democrat, but was close to becoming an Independent.

And the strongest denial comes from McCain...

McCain said, "As I said in 2001, I never considered leaving the Republican Party, period."

As you notice at the bottom of this post from The Carpetbagger Report, Republican bloggers are up in arms. "If it's true, he's finished," says one. And rightfully so: would you vote for someone for the Democratic nomination if you knew only six years ago they considered becoming an Independent or a Republican? Or course not.

We've hammered John McCain pretty hard in this space for his recent flip-flops, but I've always suspected that John McCain is a fundamentally good human being, one who could be trusted not to suspend habeas corpus for prisoners of war, expose a CIA agent's identity, or let factions of the executive branch manufacture a case for war and then force feed it to the American public. He had a maturity and sense of perspective that George Bush lacked; he wasn't driven by his narrow faith on social issues; he rejected party-line thinking when he felt it was right. I think he lost his way the last few years and submitted to weakness -- he felt he had to backtrack on some of the things he said and did in order to be president, which he clearly wants more than anything. His support for the war, in 2002 and today, I can't excuse -- but I will say that if we are going to have warmonger in office, it might as well be one who knows the peril of battle.

While I obviously want a strong progressive elected in 2008, I've always felt that I could trust John McCain with the presidency -- the country would be in decent, if not ideologically correct, hands. You can define "decent" in several ways, all of them, I think, apt.

Maybe I'm just inclined to eulogize him because if these allegations are true, it's funeral time for John McCain. I'll say this, and I expect to get savaged for it: too bad.

Comments

I would have agreed with you prior to his big sell-out to the right wing over the last 2 or 3 years. I didn't agree with him much, but I did think that he was more concerned with what was fair than what served him best.

But I don't think that anymore. Circa 2000, he would have been the last person I would have expected to sell out to either the right or left wing (each of which agreed with him on various issues, and disagreed with him on others). But the years of movie cameos and TV appearances, schilling for neocons in 2002 and 2004 and speaking at "Liberty" University's commencement ended any grudging respect I had for him.

I understand he wants to be president, and generally that's good. But even Hillary Clinton, who learned swaying in the wind from the master, has held firm on some issues. She's never going to be the darling of Move On, she knows it, and isn't trying. Whereas McCain was never going to be the darling of the Christian right, but has shifted all of his views to try and do so.

Posted by: adam on 03/30/07 at 10:29 AM

Recenty McCain committed what I consider to be the unforgivable sin--missing the vote on Iraq because he was on the campaign trail. I'm personally uninterested in any candidate who's out looking for the next job while we taxpayers are paying him/her to do one now.

Posted by: Kathleen A. Kelly on 04/02/07 at 1:23 PM

John McCain is a genuine war hero. His heroism in Viet Nam was so extreme that not even the Swift-Boating hatchet men could touch him.

I disagree with his politics on many issues and wish his thoughts on social issues were more progressive. But never forget what he sacrificed for our Country.

He is a true hero, a grey-maned lion warrior. We desperately need genuine warrior-heroes today, men of honor untarnished by greed, cowardice, sexual pecadillos or transparent financial or personal interest.

Learn about his crash, his broken legs, his near drowning, his suffering and humiliation, his long imprisonment and his ultimate rehabilitation. IMHO such extreme sacrifices transcend the petty details of partisan political maneuvering.

Praise him. Honor him. Vote for him if his political positions match yours. But never discard him. He has given so very much for the rest of us that he deserves to be honored and remembered for it for generations. Give less weight to the pronouncements of men who have successfully avoided combat ... who have never seen real war. Their perceptions are untrustworthy.

Posted by: Anatole France on 04/03/07 at 1:30 AM

Wow, Anatole, I think you should start a new religion; you already have your deity. I think that considering the war he fought in, I would respect McCain more if his big take away was a disgust for the pain and suffering soldiers [and civiians] are subjected to so that power mongers can strive to satisfy their egoes, check books, image - all the things that cause senseless wars like Vietnam and Iraq. Why bother taking his word over someone like Bush just because McCain actually did fight and suffer? They both have peddled the same war.
And I would say that McCain is hardly discarded, even if he doesn't succeed with his current political ego-stroke, because he's had fame, power and affluence. There were just as many who suffered as much and more, who are invisible to you because they have already been discarded a long time ago.
I don't want to dismiss any soldier, but I think it's naive to think that service and battle alone automatically imbue a person with nobility, wisdom and ethics. After all, tons of politicians fall back on their service history and tons of politicians are shitheads.

Posted by: Paul Miller on 04/03/07 at 5:50 AM

McCain was untouchable? He was done in by Rove b4 Kerry. There were insinuations that he gave out secrets under torture to the Viet Cong. He was "swift boated" long before the term was coined: in the 2000 primary. Rove has to be a genius to turn GW's lack of military service into an asset with the VFW crowd. Only in media land can this happen!

Posted by: JT Barrie on 04/03/07 at 6:25 AM