Being McCain

That's how it was described over at Red State:

John McCain has always thrived as an outsider, a maverick. He is at his best when he is back-stabbing fellow Republicans and earning kudoos [sic] from an admiring press. Can he survive, let alone function as GOP Frontrunner/Nominee and Party leader? I don't think so.

Interesting. I said here last year that McCain can't get out of the primaries, just as Joe Lieberman will never get to the Democratic Convention while the left-wing of his party holds sway. Joe is too conservative and John is...McCain.

To our Red State-er, it's about loyalty: I'm not too excited about Rudy Giuliani, but save for that snub of Pataki, he has been a fairly loyal Republican. (If anyone knows different, let me know.) Newt Gingrich is a firebrand and loves to throw firebombs, but I don't recall his party or his President being the targets of any of those. Romney, Allen and the rest have proven to be loyal Republicans, as well.

I think for many of us, it's about that yes. Perhaps most of all.

Partisanship has become a bad word but a partisan is simply one who holds to a POV and passionately acts on that world-view. John McCain is not a partisan Republican. He's a go-along, get-along who, while thinking it's a positive, doesn't care to run his opinion on every subject through a filter of purely Republican (i.e. conservative) views.

He likes to call it "maverick" while many Republicans like to call it "Democrat." And we're frustrated, like we were after the Gang of 14, like we were after Campaign Finance reform.

Glenn Reynolds doesn't think that the Senator is 'backstabbing' the President by this (and actually makes a good argument as to why) but also doesn't believe that McCain will succeed. As Tom Maguire pointed out to us yesterday and Glenn points to today, there's just too much McCain video and audio out there for people to buy this lates bit of revisionist history.

Welcome Back

Not you, me.

It's been almost exactly a year since my last post. I thought I'd left McCain behind when I left Arizona in my rear-view mirror last September. It seems I was mistaken.

The Senator opened his big mouth yesterday with a comment that spurs me back to working with my fellows in the blogroll...this angers me in a way that much hasn't in quite some time. Tom Maguire at Just One Minute takes it head on and in inimitable fashion, nails it:

"I think one of the biggest mistakes we made was underestimating the size of the task and the sacrifices that would be required," McCain said. "Stuff happens, mission accomplished, last throes, a few dead-enders. I'm just more familiar with those statements than anyone else because it grieves me so much that we had not told the American people how tough and difficult this task would be."

Those phrases are closely associated with top members of the Bush administration, including the president.

Well, yes, but... John McCain is a great American, but does he have a great memory? Perhaps he remembers who said this on March 18, 2003, on the eve of war:

O'REILLY: All right. Now you are confident it's going to be a quick military knockout, correct?

MCCAIN: I am reasonably confident of that. There is such a thing as the fog of war, there is such a thing of Saddam Hussein complicating the problem. But I am confident our technological capabilities are overwhelming and the men and women in the military are superb. We can count on them.

To be fair, McCain was presumably referring to the initial liberation, and he was correct that it was a quick knockout. However, he certainly did not emphasize the possibility of a long and problematic occupation in this appearance.

Whatever - at least the man is educable.

Whatever is right. The President never painted the picture attributed to him. Not once. While the VP is ridiculed for the now famous "Greeted as liberators," line, one who was there sheds a little light on things. It happened:

Pres. Bush: "strikes out . . . on the fact that we were going to be treated as liberators."

Hitchens: "I saw it myself."

Matthews: "Pictures?"

Hitchens:

"No. I was there. I saw it myself. American soldiers and British soldiers were greeted by hundreds of thousands of people with real joy. I saw it myself. I can't believe people say it didn't happen."

Maguire gives us another quote from Cheney about force size. I suppose McCain and others have the right to ridicule it but they are not right. The force was in fact large enough for overthrowing the regime. The mistakes came later.

Senator McCain and his fan club are welcome to criticize the anticipation and handling of the insurgency but this nonsense about Bush and the Cake-walk is absurd and I've had it. For a man who claims he's supportive of the President's policy in the biggest sense to turn around and lie about what was or wasn't said goes beyond the pale. Why he thinks it will win him conservatives in '08 escapes me.

But he's not running.