He still is big

The Vanity Fair piece on John McCain is well worth reading, not because it pushes the “he was never a maverick” angle well (personally, I don’t completely agree with that angle), but because it paints an interesting portrait of an old man who only knows life in the Senate and can’t adjust to new political realities:

“McCain doesn’t understand, at a fundamental level, media and communications in the modern age. All of this stuff that’s changed in very rapid fashion—the Twitter, the this, the that, or the other. For him it’s the Sunday shows, and things like that. It’s kind of like, ‘Where’s Johnny Apple?’” (R. W. Apple Jr., the late New York Times correspondent and editor, had been a friend since their days in Vietnam.)

[....]

The Senate is McCain’s whole life, his reason for being. “This is what he does,” one former aide says. “He is a United States senator. This is his ecology. It’s a big job, but it’s a really small world. It’s like a killer whale born in captivity in SeaWorld; it doesn’t know any better. It doesn’t know it’s supposed to be in the Pacific Ocean.”

The reason he hates Obama (the article describes in detail his dislike for Dr. Utopia) is “who the hell are you, punk, I’m John fucking McCain, king of the Senate”. It’s not so different from Marty Peretz “I’m the fucking editor of the great New Republic, who are you to call me a bigot.”

I’m not sure that there ever was a time when very many people cared about the Sunday shows or took The New Republic very seriously. But there was a time when there some kind of pretense of that. That time is over now and it’s tough for people who spent their entire lives buying into that pretense to adjust.

Beaten to the Punch

This morning, I wondered which beltway hack would be the first to embrace McCain’s penis mavericky credentials and give them the tongue bath they so desperately need, and little did I know that David Broder had already put a spit shine on things:

Now that John McCain has taken care of his political business in Arizona, it is time for him to return to Washington and the responsibilities he bears as a leader of the Republican Party and the nation.

I did not begrudge him the $20 million he spent to win Tuesday’s primary, or whatever amount it was. Nor was I bothered by the doctrinal compromises the senator made in order to convince Arizona voters that he was, in fact, a conservative. McCain has always been a realist, doing what is necessary to survive a North Vietnamese prison camp or a tough political trap. His 2000 embrace of George W. Bush—a man he had every reason to dislike—showed his practicality, and it made possible his own presidential nomination in 2008.

I think I’m going to vomit. I wish Broder would say something that would offend AIPAC so we could get his worthless ass fired.

Another Not-Win for the TeaBaggers (& Bible Spice)

The Washington Post attempts to make lemonade:

Two years after his bitter loss in pursuit of the White House, the 73-year-old McCain now begins a final 10-week push and will be the heavy favorite. The Democratic race was still undecided, but whoever emerges will have an uphill fight in heavily conservative Arizona.

That means McCain will likely be back in the Senate next year, raising a number of questions about the future of a gridlocked Washington.

Will he work with Democrats again? Will he play a role in immigration legislation? Will he be Obama’s chief nemesis?...

(h/t commentor SuibhanDuinne for the heads-up)

Bang the Drum Slowly

Mean old man McCain starts the prepwork for the invasion of Iran the next time the GOP gets control of the WH again:

My friends: I believe that when we consider the many threats and crimes of Iran’s government, we are led to one inescapable conclusion: It is the character of this Iranian regime – not just its behavior – that is the deeper threat to peace and freedom in our world, and in Iran. Furthermore, I believe that it will only be a change in the Iranian regime itself – a peaceful change, chosen by and led by the people of Iran – that could finally produce the changes we seek in Iran’s policies.

The world dodged a bullet when that crazy prick and his idiot sidekick lost.

Grumpy old man

Steve Benen highlights a great exchange between Obama and president McCain:

The tone of the exchange makes it pretty clear that McCain still hasn’t accepted the fact that he lost the election.

I realize I say this over and over again, but it bears repeating: everything in Washington is about social status. McCain was a big man inside the beltway for years, he had Dana Milbank regularly fellating him until about a week ago, and then some nobody waltzes in and starts acting like he’s in charge. And that’s hard for McCain to take.

Post-realism watch

I’ve said before that we live in an era where reality has very little sway in our political discourse. Here’s John McCain lying repeatedly about his decision to suspend his campaign during last year’s financial crisis.

McCain said Bush called him in off the campaign trail, saying a worldwide economic catastrophe was imminent and that he needed his help. “I don’t know of any American, when the president of the United States calls you and tells you something like that, who wouldn’t respond,” McCain said. “And I came back and tried to sit down and work with Republicans and say, ‘What can we do?’ “

Later:

“[Bush] didn’t ask me to suspend my campaign,” said McCain. “I suspended my campaign—as did Senator Obama—to come back to Washington because the President had told me that we were in a world financial collapse. That’s why I did what I did. I always said that consistently.”

John McCain is a cynical, senile old man. He may not remember what happened or what he said yesterday and he may not care.

There are no consequences for lying anyway (unless it’s about sex, of course). Clark Hoyt would tell us that, technically, McCain is right that Obama suspended his campaign since Obama stopped campaigning a few months later, after the election.

The Grifter and the Coward…

As some may have heard there is an interesting primary shaping up in Arizona. Long-time Senator John McCain is being challenged by J.D. Hayworth, a disgraced former Congressman who lost his seat in 2006 in no small part because of his involvement with Jack Abramoff and that major corruption scandal named after him.

Hayworth is the Grifter and McCain is the Coward in this race. (Yes, I know that we are all supposed to be aware of reports that as a young man John McCain was a courageous POW, but history is filled with tales of men who were courageous heroes in their youth and craven cowards in their later years. John McCain’s story is one of those stories).

Both men are also linked to the Abramoff scandal. It will be fascinating to see if McCain will decide to release details about the Abramoff scandal that he has kept covered up for years in a desperate effort to hold onto his Senate seat. Yesterday he gave an indication that he was ready to take that step.

“I Stand in Obama’s Way” (Like A Cow on the Tracks)

Underrated political humorist Mark “Tongue So Firmly in Cheek As to Protrude from the Vulgar Bodily Orifice” Ambinder reaches a level of deadpan genius that Steven Wright would envy:

John McCain has released the first two ads of his 2010 Senate reelection campaign, and he’s got some sharp words for President Obama, possibly the sharpest he’s offered yet.

“President Obama is leading an extreme, left wing crusade to bankrupt America. I stand in his way every day. If I get a bruise or two knocking some sense into heads in Washington, so be it…”

A narrator calls McCain “Arizona’s last line of defense” against Obama’s agenda and says McCain leads the charge against “ridiculously unaffordable ideas like government-run health care.”
...
McCain has been critical of Obama’s agenda, as conservatives Republicans are wont to be. But he hasn’t really sought out public forums to level those attacks since Obama entered the White House…

How many times has ‘President McCain’ appeared on what Calvin Trillin called the “Sabbath Day Gasbag” TV circuit since November 2008?

One more McCain media mancrush post

This is really more John’s territory, but here’s McCain’s schedule yesterday (from his website via NoMoreMisterNiceGuy):

**U.S. Senator John McCain will be appearing on the following television programs TOMORROW December 2, 2009, beginning at approximately 7:00 am ET.

7:00 am NBC’s TODAY Show with Matt Lauer

7:00 am ABC’s Good Morning America with Robin Roberts

7:00 am CBS’ Early Show with Harry Smith

7:30 am CNN’s American Morning with John Roberts

8:00 am Fox News’ Fox & Friends

7:00 pm CNBC’s Kudlow Report

5:30 pm BBC Newsnight with Gavin Esler

7:00 pm BBC World News America with Matt Frei

But that he loved himself more

Joe Klein on president McCain (via Steve Benen):

To put it as simply as possible, McCain—and his cohorts—are trying to score political points against the President in the midst of an international crisis. It is the sort of behavior that Republicans routinely call “unpatriotic” when Democrats are doing it. I would never question John McCain’s patriotism, no matter how misguided his sense of the country’s best interests sometimes seems. His behavior has nothing to do with love of country; it has everything to do with love of self.

I think that’s about right. But, I have to ask: how can you say that someone is selling his country down the river out of love for himself without questioning that person’s patriotism?

Update. Atrios has a good answer to this question:

[I]t’s because John McCain is a severe narcissist. He certainly doesn’t think he’s putting himself ahead of country, he’s just not really able to distinguish between the two.

That’s exactly it, I think. McCain’s self-aggrandizement isn’t cynical, it’s based on the belief that what’s good for John McCain is good for the United States. It’s the same way that all the flag pin stuff isn’t just political posturing, it’s based on an actual belief in the power of the Tinkerbell strategy.

Profiles In Douchebaggery

Michael Goldfarb, lead McCain Report blogger on loan from the Weekly Standard:

Joe Klein is not impressed:

Here we have the McCain campaign’s execrable Michael Goldfarb slinging around accusations of anti-semitism—a favorite pastime, as we’ve seen this year, among Jewish neoconservatives.

Nor is Sullivan:

Michael Goldfarb, McCain spokesman, accuses Barack Obama of hanging around with anti-Semites – plural – on CNN. Asked to name one other anti-Semite other than his allegation about Rashid Khalidi, he can’t. He won’t. But he leaves it hanging, refusing to disown or retract the charge. This is pure McCarthyism. And it is the rotten core of McCain.

I know this is getting old, hearing me say it over and over again, but when I said that the McCain campaign was being run by wingnut bloggers, I was not engaging in hyperbole. I was simply describing who is running the McCain campaign- wingnut bloggers.

The GOP just needs to be destroyed.

Is Anything For Real?

For chrissakes, now “Joe the Plumber” is on the campaign trail stumping for McCain:

“I’m honestly scared for America,” Wurzelbacher said.

He later said Obama would end the democracy that the U.S. military had defended during wars.

“I love America. I hope it remains a democracy, not a socialist society. ... If you look at spreading the wealth, that’s honestly right out of Karl Marx’s mouth,” Wurzelbacher said.

“No one can debate that. That’s not my opinion. That’s fact.”

Joe the Plumber is named Sam, isn’t actually a plumber, doesn’t have any plan to buy any business, makes nowhere near 250k a year, and would actually get a tax cut under Obama.

Yet they have him out there anyway, giving us his deep thoughts on socialism. You simply can not make this shit up. The McCain campaign is now a surrealist farce. Or maybe I meant surrealist force.

*** Update ***

Sam the non-plumber is also not a veteran or an Alaskan, not that it matters to Sarah Palin.

“They Made Us Do It!!!!!11oneeleven!!”

These guys really do think we are stupid:

John McCain’s campaign manager says he is reconsidering using Barack Obama’s relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright as a campaign issue during the election’s closing weeks.

In an appearance on conservative Hugh Hewitt’s radio program, Davis said that circumstances had changed since John McCain initially and unilaterally took Obama’s former pastor off the table. The Arizona Republican, Davis argued, had been jilted by the remarks of Rep. John Lewis, who compared recent GOP crowds to segregationist George Wallace’s rallies. And, as such, the campaign was going to “rethink” what was in and out of political bounds.

Is there anyone out there who honestly thought these shitbirds were not going to trot Wright out the last two weeks? Anyone? And that the justification for it is what someone else said, not the Obama campaign, is just priceless.

I have said this over and over and over again- the McCain campaign is being run by wingnut bloggers.

By all means, fellows, blow the last bit of your budget in the last two weeks of advertising on Rev. Wright. Please. Thank goodness none of the clowns in the McCain campaign have heard of Diamond and Bates.

Another Lesson

First Dude in front of a rally attendant holding a sign that says “Charles Manson was a community organizer.” Classy.

Cause:

John McCain, third debate: We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama’s relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy. The same front outfit organization that your campaign gave $832,000 for “lighting and site selection.” So all of these things need to be examined, of course.

Effect:

An ACORN community organizer received a death threat and the liberal activist group’s Boston and Seattle offices were vandalized Thursday, reflecting mounting tensions over its role in registering 1.3 million mostly poor and minority Americans to vote next month.

John McCain is so concerned about domestic terrorism, he and his campaign are trying to create a bunch of them.

(via)

A Lesson

Cause:

Text from McCain Robo-calls

“You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home, and killed Americans,’’ a McCain robo-caller tells voters. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his Democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country.”

“I’m calling on behalf of John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama and his Democrat allies in the Illinois Senate opposed a bill requiring doctors to care for babies born alive after surviving attempted abortions—a position at odds even with John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama and his liberal Democrats are too extreme for America. Please vote—vote for the candidates who share our values.’‘

Effect:

John McCain’s respectful campaign.

Keep that in mind the next few weeks while you read right-wing blogs complain about the media treatment of Joe the Plumber, who was thrust onto the national stage by McCain. The “I am Joe” campaign may be the lamest thing, ever.