Day: May 7, 2008

McCain Says Republicans Piss Him Off

Trish
Don’t make me come down there.

A brave voter tossed a question sure to piss off John McCain at the candidate, then crouched back in a genital-covering squat and waited for the response. *

The voter read McCain a quote from Republican Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, who said in January that “the thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine.”

“He is erratic,” Cochran told the Boston Globe. “He is hotheaded. He loses his temper.”

“I am familiar with the quote,” McCain cracked, as the questioner recounted Cochran’s comments.

The questioner, rumored to have lost a bet with friends resulting in his being forced to approach McCain, but in the most gentle terms possible, * said the Republican’s temper was “something of a concern.”

McCain admitted he gets mad. And you know what really pisses him off? His fellow Republicans.

The voter read McCain a quote from Republican Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, who said in January that “the thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine”

“Well, I will confess to you my friend, that I get angry,” he explained. “I got angry when I saw a guy named Abramoff that ripped off Native Americans for millions and millions and millions of dollars that ended up putting him in federal prison.”

“I get angry when I see 233 million of your tax dollars going to an island, to a bridge on an island with 50 people on it,” he said [in reference to pork spending from Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)]. “I get angry when I see corruption to the point when we have former members of Congress residing in federal prison [most likely indicating former Rep. “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.)].

Is it me, or was this an odd response? Couldn’t he have taken the opportunity to smear some Democrats there? You know, “I am really ticked off about gay marriage.” Or, “I lose it when the recorded voice asks me if I want to speak in Spanish.” Or, “I want to bite my car on the hood when someone says we need to leave Iraq before 2108.”

But no, all McCain’s ire was directed at those in his own party. And judging from the quote from Republican Thad Cochran that prompted the question, they aren’t too thrilled with him either.

* Well, that’s what I would have done anyway.

New Law Works to Deny Nuns the Right to Vote

Trish

So this is what the Supreme Court’s recent decision to require government-issued identification cards at the polls looks like in practice. Ancient nuns don’t get to vote.

The nuns, all residents of a retirement home at Saint Mary’s Convent near Notre Dame University, were denied ballots by a fellow sister and poll worker because the women, in their 80s and 90s, did not have valid Indiana photo ID cards…

“It’s the law, and it makes it hard,” said Sister Julie McGuire, who was working at the polling place and had to explain to the nuns that they could not vote. “Some don’t understand why.”

Along with the very old, non-driving public, the new requirement hits young people as well.

The law does not recognize out-of-state driver’s licenses, a problem for college students who under Indiana law must intend to live in their college communities to vote, which involves obtaining an Indiana ID.

Both the elderly and college students are traditionally Democratic voters.

Arianna: McCain Told Me He Did Not Vote for Bush in 2000 – Nor Did Cindy

Jon Ponder

So McCain voted for Gore?

Arianna, posting at Huffington Post:

At a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election, I was talking to a man and his wife, both prominent Republicans. The conversation soon turned to the new president. “I didn’t vote for George Bush” the man confessed. “I didn’t either,” his wife added. Their names: John and Cindy McCain (Cindy told me she had cast a write-in vote for her husband).
“By abandoning his core principles and embracing Bush — both literally and metaphorically — he has morphed into an older and crankier version of the man he couldn’t stomach voting for in 2000.”
– Arianna Huffington
The fact that this man was so angry at what George Bush had done to him, and at what Bush represented for their party, that he did not even vote for him in 2000 shows just how far he has fallen since then in his hunger for the presidency. By abandoning his core principles and embracing Bush — both literally and metaphorically — he has morphed into an older and crankier version of the man he couldn’t stomach voting for in 2000.

Los Angeles Times:

McCain advisor Mark Salter rejected Huffington’s assertion as “totally false.”

“Arianna has a new book to promote,” Salter said Tuesday. “Whatever her cause celebre of the moment is — and it’s always subject to further revisions with her — she will say anything to promote it and make anything up.”

Reached by phone in Miami, Huffington stood by her story. She said she had admired McCain but had gradually became disillusioned, persuaded that he had forsaken his maverick, truth-telling ways.

“I felt the media is so enamored with McCain and they are giving him a pass on one thing after another,” Huffington said. “I think there is a disconnect in the country . . . and I felt it was time for me to tell what I knew.”

Arianna:

Through a spokesperson with the colorful name Tucker Bounds, McCain has denied telling me he didn’t vote for Bush in 2000. “It’s not true,” Bounds told the Washington Post, “and I ask you to consider the source.”

My sentiments exactly — because John McCain has a long history of issuing heartfelt denials of things that were actually true.

He denied ever talking with John Kerry about his leaving the GOP to be Kerry’s ’04 running mate — then later admitted he had, insisting: “Everybody knows that I had a conversation.”

He denied admitting that he didn’t know much about economics, even though he’d said exactly that to the Wall Street Journal. And the Boston Globe. And the Baltimore Sun.

He denied ever having asked for a budget earmark for Arizona, even though he had. On the record.

He denied that he’d ever had a meeting with comely lobbyist Vicki Iseman and her client Lowell Paxon, even though he had. And had admitted it in a legal deposition.

And those are just the outright denials. He’s also repeatedly tried to spin away statements he regretted making (see: 100-year war, Iraq was a war for oil, etc.).

So, yes, by all means, “consider the source.”

Apparently not voting for Bush was the last honest — and smart — thing McCain has done.