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jack3566McCain’s Never Weres
John McCain has been a high profile figure for much of his career of public service, and boy is it a long one. He graduated from the U.S. naval academy in Annapolis Maryland in 1958 and, from there, flew bombing runs in the Vietnam War. When his plane was shot down during the war, he was captured and held as a P.O.W for over five years until he was released in 1973. Since then, he has been an outspoken opponent of torture, even in the United State War on Terror.
After his release from captivity, McCain served in the House of Representatives for Arizona, and later the Senate. No one can question his dedication public service or his experience, but like any politician he has had his follies. Who can forget his near political collapse earlier this year due to funding problems or his failed Presidential run in 2000, when he lost out to the young George W. Bush?
The Presidential Run of 2000 is McCain’s first major ‘never was,’ where things got nasty between him and Bush and he lost the nomination. In South Carolina, Bush’s camp ran a major smear campaign, suggesting that McCain may have fathered an illegitimate African American child and that he opposed bills to help veterans who were victims of agent orange and gulf war syndrome. At the time, a letter from five prominent Senators, all war veterans, denounced the attack, but it had already done its damage: McCain lost South Carolina and, ultimately, the election bid.
It may have been this failure that prompted two more ‘never were’ moments of McCain’s career: an alleged discussion with Democrats about leaving the Republican party in 2001, followed by rumors of joining the John Kerry ticket as Vice President in 2004. The New York Times carried a story about both of these events today, though the details of the possible party switch of 2001 have been called into question. The Democrats, including John Kerry, claim that it was McCain camp who came to them to discuss the switch, whereas McCain’s supporters claim it was proposed by the Democrats.
In either case, neither the possible party switch or the vice presidential possibilities are very surprising. Of the five Senators who defended McCain in 2000, four were Democrats, including John Kerry. And later, during Kerry’s own run against Bush, it was McCain who came to his defense when the Bush campaign used similar tactics to smear Kerry’s Vietnam War record. The two veteran senators seem to have a good relationship, even though McCain claims he wouldn’t have accepted the offer for Vice President even if it had officially been offered.
These phantoms of McCain’s past seemed to have been set aside and ignored by voters, just like the difficulties the Senator had with his campaign earlier this year. His primary opponents weren’t able to dash his reputation the way Bush’s campaign did in 2000, but maybe that’s because no one seemed to expect him to win. Huckabee was the surprise front runner after Iowa, while Romney came in second, and Rudy Giuliani was slated to make a comeback in Florida. McCain was expected to win New Hampshire just like he did in 2000, but after that the victories kept on coming. Romney won in Michigan and Nevada, but then McCain took South Carolina, a major battleground. The rest is history: a few victories for the other candidates, but eventual domination by McCain.
Yet though the voters seemed to have overlooked McCain’s political battle scars during the primaries, will they be so forgiving in November? The polls show McCain as catching up to both Clinton and Obama, but as it stands now, they’re under constant scrutiny while McCain takes it easy and musters his forces. When the protracted primary season finally comes to an end, he’ll be ready, but will it be enough? He’ll have to sway the independent voters that helped him during his campaign and he may be able to do it, but with his associations with the Democrats and his failure in 2000 lurking in the closet, will the conservatives stand behind McCain? It’s possible, but it’s also possible that, disenfranchised by the failures of the candidates everyone expected to win, the conservative vote will falter and McCain will have to count 2008 as the next big thing that never was.
Filed under: Democrats, Election 2008, John McCain, Politics, Republicans | Tagged: bush, conservatives, john kerry, mccain, veterans, Vietnam
McCain comes across as honest. Even if someone does not agree with a stance he takes, they almost inherently respect him.
This election will be less about individuals and their political success, and more based on their forward looking statements. What are their goals for America and how will we all get there.
The more a candidate stays away from the American press corps, the better his numbers will do. There is something to being in the news all the time that creates instability in people’s minds - or so the polling numbers show.
Things will even out in the fall, and McCain will have to answer on national debates, his plan for Iraq and the Economy - these will dominate the election.
I think the failures you mention, have actually made McCain stronger and more formidable–not less.
[...] Giuliani camp, I can tell you it was pretty bloody), but now the GOP is all love and rainbows and McCain ponies. And so it should be. (we’ll save our bitterness for the inevitable convention [...]
MC-CAIN’S “WINNING” STRATEGY IN THE PRESIDENTIAL BATTLE OF THE AMERICAN CULTURAL WAR
With Hillary now condemned by the Kennedy Liberals to be burnt at the stake, McCain is the presidential candidate desperately supported by both panicked Podhoretz Neo-Conservatives and Leiberman Neo-Liberals. His shrewd puppeteer, that political dirty trickster Charlie Black, to compensate for McCain’s reputation being insanely subversive to both traditional Reagan Conservatism and Kennedy Liberalism, and for Obama’s reputation being honorable, shall depend on deceptive propaganda techniques, for a politically suicidal campaign that will predictably culminate with McCain getting a well earned date with a Democrat and Republican firing squad.
This foolish Marxist strategy is transparently intended to miraculously transform the image of Neo-Con McCain into an acceptable Conservative, while transforming the image of young Obama into an unacceptable radical black Liberal, by hook and by crook. McCain has notoriously opposed the Republican efforts to preserve lower taxes, supported child sacrifice by abortion, rebuked and ridiculed Christian sects, suppressed freedom of speech on the internet, supported illegal immigration of Mexican labor, supported the loss of vital American technology and jobs to China, and supported the illegal sacrifice of the wealth and blood of the American People for the sole benefit of Israel; and he has accomplished nothing noteworthy in his long, contentious, and politically divisive public career. Obama has earned an honorable reputation and a promising political future, by his Harvard legal education and his hard honest work as Illinois Senator.
McCain’s insane disloyalty to his Christian God, his Constitution, his Republican Party, and his military forces will be drowned out by Charlie Black’s incessant propaganda portraying him as the most trustworthy and competent Conservative candidate. Endorsements by Judas ministers and turncoat Conservatives will be bought with campaign promises. Much of the freedom of speech on the internet will be suppressed by continuous complaints and threats. Simultaneously, incessant slanderous propaganda attacks will be launched against Obama’s name, religion, patriotism, and political philosophy. Anti-Semite, black-racist, and political-sleaze baiting attacks will be instigated by Black against vulnerable religious and political groups within Obama’s broad spectrum of supporters, and their vices will be deceptively associated with Obama, as in the recent cases of the real estate crook and the old black racist pastor. And political collusion among millions of Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs will be orchestrated through leading Neo-Con and Neo-Lib commentators in the news and entertainment media. Of course, all of this injustice and persecution of Obama will never be forgotten and will certainly be punished.
McCain’s strategy, based on the assumption that the majority of decent and trustful Americans are sufficiently gullible, is foolish because leading Liberals and Conservatives have long recognized that their real enemies in the American Cultural War are these Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs now entrenched in government, colleges, schools, and news and entertainment agencies. Their incessant subversion of traditional Christian culture and Constitutional government has been intensifying since the McCarthy Era, when politically defeated as Marxist refugees from Nazi Germany, they quickly evolved into two species of Neo-Marxists, the crypto-Marxist Neo-Liberal Democrats and Neo-Conservative Republicans, to resume their relentless ideological politically struggle to gain social and economic power over the America People.
Presently, it is in the vital interests of the Reagan Conservatives and Kennedy Liberals to fight side by side in this crucial election presidential battle of the Cultural War for the imminent defeat of Neo-Lib Hillary and Neo-Con McCain, the expulsion of the Neo-Libs and Neo-Cons from the Democrat and Republican parties, and the patriotic reformation of their endangered traditional Christian culture and Constitutional government.
There are two strategies by which these rather foolish Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs shall be defeated. The first is by a Holy Alliance, whereby both Reagan Conservatives and Kennedy Liberals vote for Obama. The second is by Liberals voting for Obama; and Conservatives voting for Ron Paul, Huckabee, and Romney as write-in candidates. The first strategy offers the additional benefit of quickly re-unifying Republicans and Democrats spiritually, under the shared love of their rich Christian culture and enlightened Constitutional government, against these insidious Neo-Con and Neo-Lib enemies who have so bitterly divided them over the years.
Google: Mearsheimer Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy; Stricherz Why the Democrats are Blue; Wall Street Journal McCain-Feingold Legislation; Ron Paul Human Events Interview; Who Would the World Elect.
What we really learned in South Carolina in 2000 was that there is no veteran of any war that George Bush’s team will not smear.
They seem to have a preference for smearing Vietnam vets, but in a pinch, they’ll smear any vet.