In Interview After Killing DADT Repeal, McCain Proves Again He’s Not Fit for National Leadership

After leading the effort to stop the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the Senate yesterday — a repeal he supported in 2006 — Sen. John McCain had a temper tantrum during an interview with reporters Kerry Eleveld from the Advocate and Chris Geidner of Metro Weekly, who dared confront him with facts about DADT that were counter to the false narrative he’d been promoting.

“It is not the policy, it is not the policy, it is not the policy You can say that it is the policy, sir, if you choose to. It is not the policy.”
– McCain

“I don’t care what you say! And I don’t care what others say,” he barked, when reporters pointed out that, contrary to DADT policy, service personnel had been sought out for dismissal because they were gay. When the reporters continued to press him, he went into a juvenile rant, railing, “It is not the policy, it is not the policy, it is not the policy You can say that it is the policy, sir, if you choose to. It is not the policy.”

Under DADT, the military is not supposed to investigate personnel who are merely suspected of being gay — that’s the “don’t ask” part. But it does happen — and John McCain knows it does.

In an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSBNC last night, Major Mike Almy, who was dismissed after his personal emails were hacked by the military, called McCain on his B.S.:

[…]

AZ Sen: McCain, 74, Reads Primary Win Acceptance Speech from Teleprompters

McCain reading rant from teleprompter during 2010 primary acceptance speech
McCain reading rant from teleprompter during 2010 primary acceptance speech

Sen. John McCain, who will be 74 years old on Sunday, acknowledged winning the Arizona Republican Senate primary yesterday by reading prepared remarks from a teleprompter. McCain spent $20 million to defeat J.D. Hayworth, a disgraced Republican congressman, TV pitchman and local right-wing radio talk show host.

In order to win nomination for a fifth term in the Senate, McCain had to run to the right of Hayworth, whose main appeal was among tea baggers. McCain won with a margin of 25 percent, but in doing so he trashed his former pose as a principled politician by flip-flopping on immigration, campaign reform and other issues.

In a telling moment, McCain’s desperation to win at all costs even drove him to deny that he’d ever been a “maverick,” despite the fact that the term had been used by his presidential campaign as a theme at rallies and in television ads and that he’d applied the term to himself in multiple quotes that were easily found on the Internet.

McCain faces Democrat Rodney Glassman, a former Republican, whose campaign drove itself into a ditch last Friday, Aug. 20, when three of his top aides abruptly quit. Confidential sources say the resignations were a response to Glassman’s “berating staffers and volunteers in public, even yelling at them” and because of a homophobic remark he made about an openly gay Tucson city councilmember that the councilmember has confirmed.

Ironically, in a vote among staffers on Capitol Hill, John McCain was once named the second most bad-tempered elected official, behind the late Sen. Ted Stephens (R-Alaska). McCain also spouts anti-gay rhetoric, despite the fact that his wife and daughter have come out in favor of gay civil rights.

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Now Senate Republicans Are Fighting to Keep Cornhusker Kickback and Leave Seniors’ Medicare ‘Donut Hole’ in Place

In the upside down world that is the United States Senate, Republicans and conservative Democrats have vowed to kill the “fix-it” amendment to the health-care reform law passed by the House on Sunday.

What this latest GOP flip-flop underscores is that conservatives really do not care about Americans’ health-care. They are motivated by solely by politics and their desire to inflict as much damage as they can onto the president and his party.

As Sen. John McCain, ever-increasingly now the Senate’s resident curmudgeon, put it, “There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year,” he told an Arizona radio station. “They have poisoned the well in what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.”

Elsewhere he said: “We’ll challenge it every place we can … We’ll fight everywhere.”

Finally McCain added: “‘Get off my lawn!”

But in their efforts to kill the amendment, conservatives are doing a complete about-face. Killing the amendment will let stand special deals to states, including Florida and Nebraska — the latter being the “Cornhusker Kickback” — which Republicans have lambasted since they were included in the Senate version last year.

Even conserva-Dem Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska — who in December traded his vote on the reform bill for the Cornhusker Kickback for his state — says he will vote against the fix-it amendment, meaning he’s now against the very backroom deal he sold his vote for three months ago.

Another provision in the amendment would close the “donut hole” in Medicare drug coverage. It seems likely that senators in states with lots of retirees — like Arizona where McCain is up for reelection this year — would think twice about preserving this product of Bush-era ineptitude that makes thousands of seniors choose between buying food and or paying for medicine.

What this latest GOP flip-flop underscores is that conservatives really do not care about Americans’ health-care. They are motivated solely by politics and their desire to inflict as much damage as they can onto the president and his party.

But it’s foolhardy moves like this — coming out to oppose elements of the bill, like the Cornhusker Kickback, that they demonized — that puts them at risk of being unmasked before their own voters as what they are: craven politicians who care more about their own careers than they do the health and welfare of the American people.

McCain’s Extramarital Affair with Cindy Ended His Friendship with Reagans in the 1970s

Strained: Reagan with McCain before she endorsed him earlier this year
Strained: Reagan with McCain before she endorsed him earlier this year

The Los Angeles Times published a story today, front page above the fold, detailing the adulterous personal history of a presidential candidate, a story that would be upending the dynamics of the 2008 presidential campaign — possibly even throwing the election to the other party — had the story been about a Democratic candidate.
The media will ignore this story, even when McCain campaigns in California for a constitutional amendment that protects marriage — not from adultery, the real threat to marriage — but from gay people seeking equal rights.
Instead, the story is about John McCain, the Republican, and is therefore bound to be ignored by the rest of the mainstream press.

The only possible interest the story might generate in the corporate media — and in conservative circles, where McCain is already not particularly well-liked — stems from the fact that McCain’s extramarital affair with his current wife, Cindy, permanently ended his friendship with Ronald Reagan and, especially, his wife, Nancy, around the same time Reagan was running for president 30 years ago.

The Times article opens with the strained moments around Nancy Reagan’s tepid endorsement of McCain earlier this year:

Outside her Bel-Air home, Nancy Reagan stood arm in arm with John McCain and offered a significant — but less than exuberant — endorsement.

“Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided, and then we endorsed,” the Republican matriarch said in March. “Well, obviously this is the nominee of the party.” They were the only words she would speak during the five-minute photo op.

In a written statement, she described McCain as “a good friend for over 30 years.” But that friendship was strained in the late 1970s by McCain’s decision to divorce his first wife, Carol, who was particularly close to the Reagans, and within weeks marry Cindy Hensley, the young heiress to a lucrative Arizona beer distributorship.

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The Real Threat to Marriage: Top 10 GOP Adulterers

Ten Commandments

The traditional media may be interested almost exclusively in the sex lives of Democratic politicians, but on the hypocrisy index, it is hard to score higher than Republicans pontificating about saving the institution of marriage while so many of their leaders are serial and long-time adulterers:

1. President George H.W. Bush allegedly had an LTR with British-born Jennifer Fitzgerald that lasted at least two decades, all while married to Bar, who said, “He didn’t even notice when I stopped coloring my hair.”

2. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, famously married to Maria Shriver since 1986, is allegedly a purveyor of prostitutes, the father of at least one child out of wedlock and a serial groper of women in workplace situations.

3. Sen. John McCain, 2008 Republican presidential frontrunner, and admitted adulterer and alleged philanderer. [Update July 2008: McCain’s Extramarital Affair with Cindy Ended His Friendship with Reagans in the 1970s]

4. Rudolph Giuliani, former mayor of New York City and another GOP 2008 presidential contender, betrayed his second wife, TV presenter Donna Hanover, with his “very good friend” Judith Nathan, whom he has since married. Hanover also publicly accused Rudy of having an affair with a staffer, Cristyne Lategano-Nicholas.

5. Rush Limbaugh, comedian, (a.k.a. “Rusty Sharpe”) dated Marta Fitzgerald while she was married to someone else. Marta later became his third wife. (He and CNN’s Daryn Kagin recently stopped dating.)

6. Bill O’Reilly, propagandist, who is married to Maureen McPhilmy, tried to have phone sex with Andrea Mackris, who sued him for sexual harrassment.

7. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, is probably the most audacious serial adulterer in any political party.

8. Former Rep. Bob Barr’s notoriety as an adulterer was one of many ironies around the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA) which he wrote, and which was passed with the leadership of fellow adulterers Sen. Majority Leader Bob Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

9. Rep. Henry Hyde, who served as chairman of House Mangers in the adultery-related impeachment of President Clinton, was a home-wrecker himself. Hyde had an affair when he was a young and foolish man of 41 while he and his girlfriend were both very much married. Her husband later said Hyde broke up his family.

10. Gary Bauer, professional moralizing Christian nationalist, experienced a mutiny when he was running for president when actual Christians on the staff of his 2000 presidential campaign quit in protest over Bauer’s “inappropriate” behavior with a 26-year-old deputy campaign manager. Euww.

11. (Updated) Had to add this one sent in by reader S.O. that probably should have bumped poor old Henry Hyde on the list: Neal Horsley, and rightwing religious nut, freely admitted to a kinky sex life, including this outrageous exchange on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes:

AC: “You had sex with animals?”

NH: “Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule.”

AC: “I’m not so sure that that is so.”

NH: “You didn’t grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?”

AC: “Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?”

NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality… Welcome to domestic life on the farm…”

UPDATE: Thanks for all the emails. Our list attempts to identify the top 10 adulterers so there were several top contenders that didn’t make it:

  • Rep. Bob Livingston, the man who would have been House Speaker after Newt if Larry Flynt hadn’t uncovered some very kinky dirt on Livingtston. He was a top contender but since he never really served as Speaker, was bumped for Bauer.
  • It is true that Nancy Reagan was pregnant when she married Ronnie, but neither of them was married to anyone else at the time. By Republican standards of “abstinence only,” Nancy clearly did not say “no.”
  • We covered the rumors of troubles in the marriage of the president and Laura Bush but the evidence of this is spotty.
  • A definite top 10 contender is the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, a sanctimonius Clinton-hater, who, as reader TL reminds us, “[Apparently] had a fling with the DAUGHTER of someone he was having an affair with and then arranged for (or at least condoned) the abortion of their child.”
  • Back-bencher Rep. Don Sherwood of Pennsylvania, whose adultery with a younger woman was revealed after he tried to strangle her, didn’t make the cut, but someone please tell us he won’t be re-elected. (And thanks, M.H. and others, for the reminder!)
  • Reader Tim pointed out the track record of Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa, who used his wife and autistic child as family values props then left them for a high-powered lobbyist after he was elected.

Keep ’em coming!