Maverick? Who’s a Maverick?

From Newsweek:

Late last month, at a dusty fairground outside Tucson, John McCain stood behind the person who is, at least for the next few years, surely his most important legacy to American politics. And speaking to the adoring mob, Sarah Palin stood behind John McCain, repaying his inestimable gift to her in the most compelling possible fashion: by helping him to survive.

…snip…

Many, many years ago she’d competed in a beauty pageant, Palin declared, as women howled (and a few men growled) approvingly. McCain would surely win the talent and debate portions of any such contest, she went on, but no way would the Washington elite and “pundints” and “lame-stream media” ever crown him “Miss Congeniality”! “He’s never been a company man, he’s never been one to just ‘go with the flow,’?” she crowed. For there was at least one thing she’d learned in her years of commercial fishing in Alaska: only dead fish do that.

…snip…

Much as the crowd ate up her every word, Palin had apparently missed the real message this electoral season in Arizona: for his three decades in Congress, McCain hadn’t gone with the flow enough, at least not enough to satisfy many Arizona Republicans. Why else would his rival, former congressman J.D. Hayworth, be billing himself as “the consistent conservative”? Many of the GOP’s most faithful, the kind who vote in primaries despite 115-degree heat, tired long ago of McCain the Maverick, the man who had crossed the aisle to work with Democrats on issues like immigration reform, global warming, and restricting campaign contributions. “Maverick” is a mantle McCain no longer claims; in fact, he now denies he ever was one. “I never considered myself a maverick,” he told me. “I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.” Yet here was Palin, urging her fans four times in 15 minutes to send McCain the Maverick back to Washington.

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Express Yourself

From The Arizona Republic:

The “Tea Party Express” was greeted by about 1,200 to 1,500 supporters as it rolled into Phoenix on Sunday, the third stop on a three-week, cross-country tour that ends in Washington, D.C., on April 15.

Activists from across Arizona and from as far as Seattle gathered at the Arizona State Capitol complex to sing, chant and voice their distaste of taxes, health-care reform and big government.

…snip…

U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Hayworth, who is challenging U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told protesters that a rancher in southern Arizona had just been found shot to death on his property near the Mexican border.

While admitting that “we do not know who perpetrated this attack,” Hayworth strongly suggested “illegal aliens” were to blame.

The federal government failed to protect that rancher, who was “one of the good guys,” Hayworth said.

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CPT2010

From THE HUFFINGTON POST:

While visiting Chicago to support Mark Kirk, John McCain took a moment to defend Sarah Palin’s widely mocked crib notes, written on her hand during the Tea Party Convention last weekend.

“Which is more egregious,” he asked, as if the answer were obvious, “reading from a word on your hand or a teleprompter?”

McCain continued: “I continue to be entertained now by the continuous [hysterical] attacks on Sarah Palin, who [is] very, very popular with a significant segment of the American people.”

Translation: Holy crap, I might lose my Senate seat to J. D. Frickin’ Hayworth, so I have to be nice to this backstabbing bitch so the Teabaggers don’t keep going all nuclear on my ass! I gotta blame someone–I’ve got it 💡 –that damned liberal media! So what if I had them in my pocket (and at my barbecues) for so many years and still show up on every frickin’ Sunday news show? The Teabaggers love to hate the media!

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Trick or Treat!

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¡Ay Caramba!

From The Trail at The Washington Post:

Republican presidential nominee John McCain suggested this week that he would continue President Bush’s policy of having cool relations with the government of Spain, despite having made starkly contrasting statements to the Spanish press earlier this year saying he looked forward to normalized relations with the NATO ally.

In comments that have caused a kerfuffle in Spain, McCain seemed to lump Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero in the same category as the anti-American leaders of Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba. McCain’s remarks came during in an English-language interview with Radio Caracol WSUA 1260AM in Miami, part of the Spanish-language radio group Union Radio, conducted Tuesday.

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The Ugly Truth

From Richard Cohen at The Washington Post (You might just want to skip this and click over there to read the entire article, kids):

The Ugly New McCain
Following his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain did something extraordinary: He confessed to lying about how he felt about the Confederate battle flag, which he actually abhorred. “I broke my promise to always tell the truth,” McCain said. Now he has broken that promise so completely that the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised.

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X the new W, Cafferty tells you Y

I had no internets connection last night (thank you, Tropical Storm or Hurricane Fay) , so, in order to have a poster for you kids tonight, I had to rely on what I had on my computer. I found a comic book cover that I didn’t even remember I had and thought I would go with that. Of course, that means I had to find a story to match it, and I came across this from Jack Cafferty at CNN :

Commentary: Is McCain another George W. Bush?
NEW YORK (CNN) — Russia invades Georgia and President Bush goes on vacation. Our president has spent one-third of his entire two terms in office either at Camp David, Maryland, or at Crawford, Texas, on vacation.

His time away from the Oval Office included the month leading up to 9/11, when there were signs Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America, and the time Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city of New Orleans.

Sen. John McCain takes weekends off and limits his campaign events to one a day. He made an exception for the religious forum on Saturday at Saddleback Church in Southern California.

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Delusional State

LOS ANGELES (AP) — John McCain is starting a California campaign that might already be over.

The Republican presidential candidate opens a handful of political offices this week in the nation’s most populous state, the historical turf of Reagan and Nixon that in recent years has become a Democratic fortress in presidential contests.

The Arizona senator boasts that he can win California’s 55 electoral votes, the biggest prize on Nov. 4, but he’s running as the Republican successor to GOP President George Bush, whose approval rating is at an all-time low in the state.

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