Original McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts that "mostly benefit the wealthy." Today's John McCain is all for them.
(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
Dan Payne
McCain is no maverick
Original McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts that "mostly benefit the wealthy." Today's John McCain is all for them.
(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
DURING the primaries, Barack Obama was said to be the darling of the news media. Not anymore. While the 2008 John McCain literally embraced W and courted the Religious Right, many in the news media believe he's secretly the 2000 McCain, who campaigned against W and the Religious Right.
Transcendent McCain. "I have agreed with President Bush far more than I have disagreed. And on the transcendent issues, the most important issues of our day, I have been totally in agreement and support President Bush." ("Meet the Press")
The McCain Maverick PR machine. The news media can't stop calling McCain a maverick. Media Matters, a watchdog group, found these reporters who recently said he is a maverick:
Chris Matthews - a serial offender (MSNBC), Brit Hume (Fox), Terry Moran (ABC), David Gregory (MSNBC), Nora O'Donnell (MSNBC), Lou Dobbs (CNN), Wolf Blitzer (CNN), Gloria Borger (US News, CNN), George Will (
"McCain not a maverick." That was the headline in May in the Arizona Republic, McCain's hometown paper. "When it matters the most, he seldom bucks his own party." Examining his Senate record, the Republic found that since 1999 McCain almost never strayed from the Republican Party line.
The paper quotes Keith Poole, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego and a respected analyst of Senate votes, who said of McCain: "By no means is he a liberal or even a moderate." When running for president, he is "near the far edge of the right."
Gadfly or house fly? The Washington Post found McCain voted with the GOP this Senate term on 88.3 percent of the votes. Congressional Quarterly revealed he took the president's side on bills 95 percent of the time.
Wrong from the start. McCain likes to say he was an early critic of Donald Rumsfeld's Iraq war strategy. McCain conveniently forgets that he told CNN in September of 2002 that the war would be "fairly easy" and could be won "in a very short period of time." In 2006, he curiously complained that people "were led to believe that this would be some kind of a day at the beach, which many of us fully understood from the very beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking."
Original or Crispy? Kentucky Fried Chicken lets you pick original or crispy. So does McCain. Original McCain told reporters in New Hampshire: "I would not support repeal of Roe versus Wade." The new, crispy McCain recently said: "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."
Original McCain denounced right-wing evangelical Jerry Falwell as an "agent of intolerance." Crispy McCain delivered the commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University
Original solicited and got the support of anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic televangelist John Hagee. Crispy stalled for months, then finally dropped him.
Original McCain shared the stage with anti-gay, anti-choice megachurch pastor Rod Parsley who said of Islam, "America was founded with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed." (I must've been absent from history class that day.) Crispy McCain left Parsley at the altar.
Original McCain cosponsored a bill with Senator Ted Kennedy to give illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. Crispy McCain says he would vote against his own bill.
Original McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts that "mostly benefit the wealthy." Today's Crispy is all for them.
Original McCain, a POW torture victim himself, called waterboarding a "terrible and odious practice." Crispy voted against banning it.
Original: Close Guantanamo Bay prison and move the detainees to Fort Leavenworth. Crispy: It is premature to close it.
Offshore oil drilling? Original McCain was against it. Crispy wants drilling off the coasts of California and Florida, but, inexplicably, not Alaska.
Last week, McCain called for offshore drilling at an event in Santa Barbara, Calif., where in 1969 an offshore oil rig blowout dumped 3 million gallons of crude onto coastal beaches and waterways.
A displeased McCain supporter, the governor of Cauli-fornia, said he's serious about the ban on drilling. "And we're not going to change that."
Now, that's a maverick.
Dan Payne is a Boston-area media consultant who has worked for Democratic candidates around the country. He does political analysis for WBUR radio.
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