The GOP? They've come a long way, baby.

A few months ago:

[ + ]

A few years ago:

(pic. sources: top | bot)

McCain spanks Bachmann on floor of Senate

Well, metaphorically. And not by name. And in a sloppy reading monotone kind of way. And, as Rebecca Schoenkopf notes, this, sadly, amounts lately to "one of his biannual decency jags."

But still, he deserves props for doing it. It's not like anyone else in his party would, after all. So take a few minutes to listen.

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Update

2022-08-25 Video no longer available. Sorry.

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Glad we cleared that up

"UPDATE: Coulter later clarified her comments via Twitter …"

(embiggen)

Sadly, it got bleeped.

Compare and Contrast

Regarding the repeal of DADT:

Honorable™ John McCain:

I hope that when we pass this legislation that we will understand that we are doing great damage.

Bryan Fischer (yeah, that guy):

Rarely can you point to a moment in time when a nation consigned itself to the scrap heap of history.

You'll note if you follow the links that, admittedly, Fischer goes on at greater length. But not to worry. I'm sure Angry Johnny will have his choice of talk shows to go on tomorrow, to explain how horrible he thinks civil rights are.

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[Added] Also, from the first link above (and following up on an item mentioned earlier), you tell 'em, Harry:

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader and a crucial proponent of the repeal, noted that some Republicans had indicated they might try to block Senate approval of a nuclear arms treaty with Russia because of their pique over the Senate action on the ban.

“How’s that’s for statesmanship?” Mr. Reid said.

John McCain in his own words ...

... collected by Ta-Nehisi Coates: "Fear Is the Path to the Dark Side."

Line of the Day: 2010-11-17

It's the maverick way -- spend a year studying whether soldiers deserve full civil rights, and a half an hour deciding who will be your presidential running mate.
    -- Jon Stewart

Okay, so I stepped on one of the punchlines. But only one! So here is a five-minute clip that you will still enjoy, courtesy of TPM and Mr. Snaps.

(alt. video link)

(x-posted)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I love it.

Click pic to read the actual post.

Line of the Day: 2010-09-23

My problem with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is not limited to the fact that he's wrong. The more glaring issue is his habit of saying things that are blatantly untrue while pretending to know what he's talking about.
    -- Steve Benen, via Atrios

Maverick!

John McCain thinks we only have to worry about $72,000 of our national debt!

Okay, not exactly. But seriously? This is even dumber than his earmark fetish of a few years ago.

McSoreloser

Steve Kornacki has an interesting take on He Who Was Once Considered Honorable™ -- it's easy to see everything John McCain has done over the past decade as a childish reaction to those who opposed him -- George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now J.D. Hayworth.

Steve's latest is here, and he refers to an April post of his, here. Both are worth reading.

Pardon Our Venting. Mood Under Construction.

I've been chatting with Twin about the Man Who Will Be Senator Forever Since You Bastards Wouldn't Give Him The Presidency He So Richly Deserved After All Of His Service And By The Way Have You Forgotten THAT HE WAS A POW, and well, why should Twin have to absorb all of my bile, even if he did ask for it? So here is your chat transcript (leaked from GangOfJournolist12).

Originally Posted by TwinSwords

Key graf:

"... McCain has noticeably veered right on issues ..."

[TPM link]

Originally Posted by bjkeefe

Yep. Been noticing this for a while now.

Also.

Originally Posted by TwinSwords

So, even if the tea party candidate loses, we end up with a Republican Party that's to the right of where it was before. Right? Or is McCain sui generis? Or another possibility, is McCain not really moving to the right, but only paying lip service to the tea baggers?

Originally Posted by bjkeefe

My first reaction when I saw the poll numbers and how far he is ahead of Hayworth was: So why did you have to lurch so far to the right, Mr. So-Called Maverick Who Puts Country First? Fuck you, your craven careerism, and your junkie's need for the spotlight.

But you know what? Ever since the early 2000s, when it became clear that McCain was laying the groundwork for another run, after getting beaten on his right by W, I have had no respect for him expect [corr: except] in a Machiavellian sense: (1) he knows he owns the Villagers, (2) no matter how far right he campaigns, he knows he'll be able to get a good chunk of low-info voters and bonehead "I hate the divisiveness" centrists, precisely because of (1), (3) he knows he will never be able to get most of the left, no matter what he does, due to the (R) after his name, so he's figured out a working strategy that has kept him in office since 1982.

As to how much more St. John will stay to the right once safely ensconced for another six years, well, I would ask, how much further could he go? I can't think of a single damn thing he's done to buck the party line on any issue of any importance since McCain-Feingold and some decade-old talking points on immigration reform.

I wanted Hayworth to win because I figured he'd be easier to beat in the general, and that if he got past that, then he'd be an better face of the GOP to go after once he was in office. I am sick beyond words of the phoniness of John McCain and how so few in the MSM will ever call him on it, and that's not even taking into account his disgraceful choice of St. Sarah for a running mate.

P.S. I wanted to double-check that 1982 date, and while Googling, I happened across this more tempered view (via someone who belongs in that previous paragraph): Dick Polman's "The tragedy of John McCain." A good read, that may help you understand where the bug up my ass came from, should you care, and worth it for other reasons, as well.

(pic. source)

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As it happened, Twin took a break from the back and forth above (due to "work" or some shit) and then when he came back, to see my message requesting his permission to share the above, he had in mind a new line he wanted to pursue. Since this is my blog and I wanted to have the last word, because that's how I do I'd like to encourage others to jump in, I have posted Twin's next response in the Comments. Pile in! Or on!

Ready for some Straight Talk™ about Arizona, My Friends™?

Sorry, Jim Newell. Your post must be stolen in its entirety.

No, Illegal Immigrants Do Not Kidnap and Behead Everyone in Arizona

If you have heard John McCain and Jan Brewer making hyperbolic claims of illegal immigrants kidnapping, murdering, raping, and beheading everyone and their brother in Arizona these days — their justification for the immigration law — then consider ignoring them?

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank, who usually spreads this unchecked conventional wisdom on a weekly basis, has written an excellent column debunking the myths of exponentially surging illegal immigrant violence along the border that right-wing Arizona politicians are shouting about all day, in order to justify that harsh, racial-profiling immigration law.

For example: Jan Brewer, the flustered Arizona governor, claimed last week on television, "Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded." But when this was fact-checked, "medical examiners in Arizona's border counties and the coroners said they had never seen an immigration-related beheading."

Two months ago, the Arizona Republic published an exhaustive report that found that, according to statistics from the FBI and Arizona police agencies, crime in Arizona border towns has been "essentially flat for the past decade." For example, "In 2000, there were 23 rapes, robberies and murders in Nogales, Ariz. Last year, despite nearly a decade of population growth, there were 19 such crimes." The Pima County sheriff reported that "the border has never been more secure."

FBI statistics show violent crime rates in all of the border states are lower than they were a decade ago — yet Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) reports that the violence is "the worst I have ever seen." President Obama justifiably asserted last week that "the southern border is more secure today than any time in the past 20 years," yet Rush Limbaugh judged the president to be "fit for the psycho ward" on the basis of that remark.

So poor Jan Brewer was not forced to sign this immigration bill into law because the hordes of beheading, kidnapping Mexican death monsters were surrounding her office and law enforcement needed emergency powers to shoo 'em out. And the more Brewer and McCain play up this threat of constant violence, the worse it is for Arizona's economy. And Arizona's economy is really really bad! Have you been there? Empty houses and whatnot, everywhere.

(Above: Jan Brewer gets a Wet Willie, and someone
who has NeverConsidered™ himself a Maverick™)

(pic. sources: Janny, Johnny | x-posted)

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[Added] I really cannot second Jim's recommendation strongly enough: read Milbank's column.

The Arizona Flip-Flop

Excellent post from Jim Newell on John McCain.

Rightward, Ho!

Mavericky!

Mr. McCain now sharply criticizes the bailout bill he voted for, pivoted from his earlier position that the Guantánamo Bay detention facility should be closed, offered only a muted response to the Supreme Court’s decision undoing campaign finance laws and backed down from statements that gays in the military would be O.K. by him if the military brass were on board.

No surprise here. As we have been noting, the one thing you can count on John McCain doing is fleeing to his right at the drop of a challenge, but if you'd like some more details on his most recent flip-floppery, the NYT has finally gotten around to writing them up.

From the Department of "We'll See How Long This Lasts"

Villager of Villagers Dana Milbank pines for The Old John McCain™. Not as in age, as in yoostahbee.

But even this ...

Before writing this column, I reached out to many of McCain's closest aides from the 2000 campaign to see whether they thought there still was such a man inside McCain. Most of them begged off, some saying they had lost contact with him or become estranged.

... doesn't stop him from closing thus:

I may be the last one who still holds some hope that McCain, long before he draws his last breath, may yet rejoin the fight.

[Insert Lucy and football reference here.]

(h/t: Atrios)

(previously)

'Bout Time Someone Said It

(Someone in the MSM, I mean.) You go, Frank Rich:

John McCain, commandeering the spotlight as usual, did fulminate against the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the press focus on McCain, the crazy man in Washington’s attic, was misleading. His yapping was an exception, not the rule.

The whole column is pretty encouraging.

Which, BTW, doesn't mean we should let up on the pressure. And here's a good thing to keep in mind, should others start taking their cue from Angry Johnny (the 2010 edition, I mean):

Recalcitrant Congressional Republicans will have to explain why their perennial knee-jerk deference to “whatever the commanders want” extends to Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal on troop surges but not to Mullen, who outranks them, on civil rights.

As in, Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Oh, Ambers

Sheesh:

As has been noted by virtually everyone now, John McCain in 2010 is not the John McCain of 2006.

I am shocked, shocked! And you know what else? The McCain of 2006 wasn't the McCain of 2008, or the McCain of 2004, and the McCain of 2004 wasn't the McCain of 2003, and McCain of 2003 wasn't the McCain of 2000. And the McCain of McCain-Feingold wasn't that McCain until some guy named Keating got busted. Etc.

You think the Villagers will ever remember this, all at once, or are we doomed to live with Zombie Maverick forever, and an equally brain-dead commentariat who faint in surprise every time he zigs for attention and then zags back to shore up his right flank? Or flips out at some petty personal peeve?

I see that about 119 Balloon Juicers find this no harder to understand than I do. What's up over at the Atlantic? Extra-thick bubble or something?

What Would Halperin Say?

Poll: McCain Job Approval At 15-Year Low In AZ

(h/t: Jonathan Chait)

(? | previously)

Better Ask Halperin

Deep thought: Is the recent SCOTUS decision excellent news for John McCain?

(?)

See, This is Why I Really Don't Like John McCain

Sam Stein reports that Still The Maverick™ was serving up his usual steaming piles on one of the Sunday yakfests this past weekend:

Health care legislation would be in a "very different place today," if Senator Ted Kennedy, (D-Mass) were healthy enough to participate in negotiations, Kennedy's longtime colleague and occasional foe, Sen. John McCain, (R-Ariz.), said on Sunday.

In an appearance on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," McCain said that the Massachusetts Democrat, stricken by brain cancer, was "as close to being indispensable as any individual I've ever known in the Senate." Without him, McCain added, the health care debate had stagnated far more than had he been in the chamber.

"He had a unique way of sitting down with the parties at a table and making the right concessions, which really are the essence of successful negotiations," McCain said. "So it's huge that he's absent, not only because of my personal affection for him, but because I think the health care reform might be in a very different place today."

The MSM still eats this stuff up, which by itself is a big part of the problem, but it strikes me as thoroughly dishonest -- what's the point of saying "If only Ted was around" when there's no chance that can happen? It's a throwaway line that lets McCain look like he's "reaching out" (Look! Bipartisanship! Shiny!) when there's no chance he'd ever have to back up his words with action.

And worse, he likes Ted because Ted knew how to make concessions? Can I get a big ol' WTF?

Remember, Angry Johnny, your side lost the last two elections, and if you all have made a single concession of worth, I have yet to hear about it. Just because the Democrats are some combination of too disorganized, too self-centered, and too spineless to exercise the majority they have doesn't give you any right to be demanding concessions.

Why do you trick me into reading this stuff, watertiger? I was already mad enough from reading about the even more two-faced, Holy Joe Lieberman.