Consider that, perhaps, your view of him is colored as one from the outside of the party, and you focus more on those aspects that identify him with the party to you, rather than those which separate his from the party.
As evidence of this, I would point to the fact that some non-trivial portion of the GOP, mainly those on the far right, really, really, really hated McCain. He was, consistently, a target for attack by far right wing media. If he were really so consistently just toeing the party line, why would this be the case? Why did they hate him so much? Because that antagonism goes back years, well beyond just the most recent fiasco of Trump’s administration.
Some blasts from the past, with the hard right railing against McCain:
John McCain, Coulter said, was a traitor to conservatives, so much so that she’d campaign for Hillary Clinton if he were nominated. Was there anything the Arizona senator could do, NEWSWEEK e-mailed her later, to change her mind? Would she really stump for Clinton? “I don’t know,” she wrote. Then she added: “McCain could invent a time machine, travel back in time” and take back all his liberal-leaning votes in Congress. “Short of that,” she said, “the only thing that would work is if he put a gun to my head, but since McCain is also against gun rights, that’s out.” (McCain backed a measure to close a gun-show loophole on background checks, but is otherwise supportive of gun rights.)
As McCain draws closer to the GOP nomination, many leaders of the conservative movement have gone into convulsions. The biggest headline-grabber was Coulter, who, true to form, seemed to set a new low for immoderation. But that didn’t stop a slew of other prominent hard-right pundits, most on talk radio, from trying to outrant her. Rush Limbaugh, the most popular right-wing radio host, had been railing against McCain for years, and now declared that if he were nominated, “it’s going to destroy the Republican Party.” “He’s just a lousy senator and a terrible Republican,” said Hugh Hewitt, another syndicated talk-show host. “His votes the past seven to 10 years have been on the wrong side of the issues.” The revolt went beyond talk radio’s political shock jocks. James Dobson, one of the nation’s most prominent evangelical Christian leaders, declared he could not “in good conscience” vote for McCain and endorsed Mike Huckabee—the first time Dobson had ever taken sides in a GOP primary.
If you want to prove that he acted against the party’s depredations out of conviction, wouldn’t it be easier just to point to the times when he acted against the party’s depredations out of conviction, rather then try to infer them from the reactions some people in the party had to McCain?
I don’t think anyone said he was saintly. He did several things that I hugely disagreed with. The robo caller would be among them. Palin, was another mistake, and hiring whoever was his campaign manager was also a mistake, and listening to him another, He made a fair amount, but he seemed to revert to making the right decision when it mattered,
Like how you gloss over the fact he corrected a supporter that called Obama a terrorist during the campaign, that got played over and over in the media. Many moments like that made him a decent man…
I didn’t gloss over it, I pointed that after this famous show of integrity by McCain, he went right ahead with a robocall campaign calling Obama a terrorist. This famous show was just a show, it did not in any way change the base nature of McCain’s campaign. If anything, what the full story tells us is that McCain didn’t react to the woman the way he did because he deplored the strategy of painting Obama as the other; he reacted that way because he didn’t want to be in the same room where it was happening, he wanted distance from it so he wouldn’t be directly associated with it. It was about protecting his undeserved reputation for integrity.
Or his campaign did, and he wasn’t involved in that decision. His campaign did a lot of things that he later regretted.
Oh, I just checked that specific claim, and those calls didn’t call him a terrorist. It pointed out his connection to Bill Ayers, which is quite a bit far off from calling him an arab terrorist.
Saying he regretted it is not the same thing as saying he didn’t decide it. He regretted choosing Palin, but he surely made that choice. And I don’t believe for one minute that he was unaware of the kind of campaign he was waging. He was the one who started associating Obama with terrorism, way back in April of 2008 before anyone had even heard of Palin.
And no one in the McCain campaign ever called Obama an Arab. They simply repeated claims that associated him with terrorists (by which they meant Bill Ayers), and let stupid voters make the association themselves. That’s what they repeated in the robocalls after ‘correcting’ the woman.
”You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the US Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home, and killed Americans.”
The odd thing is, that wasn’t my assertion…but if it had BOTH could have been true!
What?
OK let me try this as summarizing as sentence…
political parties using narratives are not factual. And are often abused and used to distract voters from drilling down to the real work we need to do.
Also
Organizations are not monolithic, can do evil, but its really people that are responsible for that evil.
A declared evil organization does evil, and nearly ALL people in it (maybe even all) can be evil by sharing in the evil by taking actions to support its evil. However, its factually possible to have someone good in there trying to influence it. So ergo if that is true of a evil organization then what would be true of organization with no declared intentions of evil but has been co-opted by someone who was?
I also see a pattern here…its not semantics, its not assuming something before making a conclusion. Its zooming in close on the facts, and asking why the exceptions? And being purposefully accurate about narratives being used.
I don’t have this discussion just with you guys but the people who are right leaning I know.
Its a human condition to use inaccurate narratives and labels. We do it with everything, but when it comes to politics people for some reason actually fight respecting that narratives are not akin to fact, and get angry when you point out
This is my main frustration with politics, Id rather talk about facts, specific repeatable and measurable information and decide what the objective and priorities are and get to the work of how to create it with the resources allotted. Talking in the manner that is common in politics (which I consider narrative) is completely useless from that perspective.
You right about this…nothing you say is a outright lie, its more nuanced than probably either of us can detail. The forces in a campaign and a political career, the good intentions, and yes bad intentions, and being a flawed human in the mix and its all comes down to how we view the results individually.
What you are saying is correct and has merit, as does mine, because it not about fact, its about how we see the story, the… oh nevermind :)
I didn’t realize the complexities behind filling McCain’s seat. Thanks to the Arizona State constitution and the fact that McCain passed away in August instead of May, there can’t be an election to fill the seat until 2020. And that will be only for the remainder of McCain’s term. Until then, a Republican must be appointed by the AZ gov to take the seat. (The replacement must be a Republican since that’s what McCain was, though there are no strictures on the replacement’s level of maverickness.)
As far as likely replacements, Vox suggested… the widow McCain?
On the succession, this is one of the things that marks McCain as a loyal standard Republican. I can’t remember the deadline (a few months ago I think) but if he had resigned before that deadline then his seat would be on Arizona’s ballot and at risk for Dems to take. Because he didn’t resign, the seat can’t be on the ballot, and instead a Republican Governor gets to name replacement. So it’s a partisan calculation. I don’t say that any politician wouldn’t make it, I just say it means McCain made the same choice as any politician.
I never said he “consistently toed the party line”. I said he was a loyal Republican. Look at the triangle on this chart and tell me otherwise. And above and beyond any voting record, he laid the groundwork for normalizing bloviating faux populist idiots with the Palin nomination. That’s the kind of “at any cost” obstructionism that has characterized the GOP for a long time now. That he is reviled by lot of folks in his party says more about the party than McCain’s principles. See also, Jeff Sessions.
This is true, but some points:
This was driven not by McCain, but by his campaign advisors.
A major reason for this was because the idiots Palin appealed to freaking hated McCain.
McCain straight up declared this one of his greatest mistakes.
You totally have the hots for her.
Absolutely, he bears responsibility for what his campaign did, but in terms of what it says about his character, it is more of a case of him not standing up against the decision, rather than a case of Palin being a reflection of him. By all accounts her hated her.
In terms of his character, what’s the difference between choosing her based on his own assessment and choosing her despite his own assessment because his team recommended her? I’m not getting it.
This means bupkis to me. McCain doesn’t get to use Steve Schmidt as his own personal pariah. That’s not how politics or Presidential campaign works. The candidate has to own what was done in his name. The phrase “My name is [insert name here] and I approve this message” exists for a reason, and not because it’s a catchy way to end a commercial.
When someone robs a bank, gets caught, and expresses regret, it doesn’t really matter to me. Because I know he would have gleefully spent the money if he’d gotten away with it. Do you think, if McCain had won, he would have regretted the Palin choice? I don’t. Seems to me he regretted it because it arguably cost him the election*. Oh, sure, he can also hitch onto that regret that it was a feckless and mercenary choice that did irreparable damage to our country. But in the end, the real issue with the Palin choice was that it didn’t take.
Okay, I’ll give you that one.
And, really, I don’t mean to shit up this thread talking about how I don’t share other people’s admiration for McCain. The point I’m trying to make is that, above all else, McCain was a loyal Republican who did a solid job furthering Republican interests, and he’s part of the reason we are where we are today.
-Tom
* I’m pretty sure he would have lost anyway, but it was a done deal the moment he resorted to the Palin pick.
So maybe I’m not understanding but is your basic argument that because McCain was a Republican he couldn’t be decent? If so I’m truly disappointed in you Tom.
If you think that Flake and Kaisch were more consistent critics of Trump than McCain, I think you are just wrong. McCain party loyalty dropped to an all time low in 2017. He voted/opposed more Trump appointments than any other Republican, was more outspoken in his criticism, took more concrete steps (such as making hard for Trump to get around Russian sanction), and traveled to more countries (75,000 miles in the first 6 months of 2017) to reassure foreign leaders that Trump didn’t represent most American views on international agreements. He would have done more but you know, he was sort of sideline the last 13 months dealing with cancer treatments. I’d think you of all people could relate to that. I haven’t read Flakes book, just excerpts, but I think McCain book is more critical of Trump than Flake’s. It certainly was more influential.
Naw robo caller wasn’t a mistake, it’s called getting elected and goes with the job. Negative campaign and guilt by association are part of politics and always have been. Hell Barack Obama entire campaign was saying that John McCain president would be George Bush’s 3rd term. (Any other Republican would have done the same thing in 2016 against Hillary). This entire thread is basically. Trump is pure evil, Republicans are evil, Trump is a Republican, McCain is a Republican,ergo McCain is evil.
In the case of Ayers, the association between Ayers and Obama become prominent because George Stephanolous, Bill Clinton’s former communication director, raised it in a debate. Hillary attacked him for it also. Sarah Palin used it during stump speeches and the base loved it.
Even the NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/us/politics/26ads.html said that Obama did a lot of guilt by association advertising in the campaign. If anything tying McCain to Limbaugh’s vile anti-immigration rhetoric, when McCain was one of the co-sponsors of the immigration bill that Limbaugh hated was more disingenuous than the Ayers robocalls. I bet the name recognition and hatred of Limbaugh by the left is 10x more the Bill Ayers by the right. I could write a short story about all the misleading, disingenuous, and few outright lies that Obama said about McCain during the campaign. I could write a book about all the times, Obama remained silent when his supporters told pure lies about McCain. But, I’m going to stop at the one link for several reasons.
Relitigating the 2008 campaign, when we are facing a true crisis to our democracy today is stupid. I could also write short story length post about the bad stuff, Obama did in 2008 against Hillary Clinton, or 2012 against Romney. The real news is that you could only write short-story length post about the bad stuff by either Senator McCain or Senator Obama did in the campaign. Pretty much any Presidential campaign the negative stuff is worthy of book length treatment (see the Theodore Whites Making of the Presidency series and host of others). The 2008 campaign was probably the most civil, least nasty in my lifetime, which is a tribute to both men. But fundamentally, I’m not going make the post because whatever nasty stuff Barrack Obama did in the campaign, is far outweighed by all the decency and class he showed as head of state. (I disagree with most of his policies as head of government).
Senator McCain’s, colleagues (on both sides of the aisle) have given countless examples of all the good things he has done, as a patriot, as a senator, and as a good man. I’m looking forward to hearing more tomorrow.
