I have never thought of John McCain as a serious-minded Conservative of the old school, but here he is speaking respectfully of a non-conservative President, politely answering people who criticize his party, &c;.

So why did he pick Caribou Barbie?

My spouse thinks he picked her because he wanted to lose at a certain point.  The crazies took over his party… And he doesn’t have the self-will to stay away from them.  Look at who he married, after all, he must like that sort of self-made woman.

Personally, I wish he’d stick to his talking points and be frank and polite all the time.  It’s far easier to deal with, I think.

But then again, you have to balance the fact that he supports illegal immigration with half of his caucus.  And yet, his base is the loudest about it being illegal.

So why did he pick Caribou Barbie?

To the extent that “the buck stops here”, he picked her, but she really wasn’t chosen by him to be the VP candidate, rather she was chosen for him by his puppetmasters.  He wanted to go with Senator Joementum Lieberman, but the word is the powers that be flipped shit when he made that known, and he was basically told “no fucking way in hell.”  I think deals were cut with his campaign team and the GOP overlords, and he was told that unless he got himself the wingnuttiest candidate they could find, he would be on his own.

So he made his pact with the devil, put Steve Schmidt in charge of his campaign (who had helped Dubya’s campaign spread rumors about McCain fathering a black child before the 2000 South Carolina primary), and went with Mama Mooseburger, all in a lustful quest for the top job.

It’s pretty clear that McCain and Palin hate each other’s guts today.  Anyway, I don’t think a McCain-Lieberman ticket would have fared a whole lot better, though they may have made the race slightly closer.  Then again, he may have lost the entire wingnut base had he done that.  He was pretty screwed either way.

But then again, you have to balance the fact that he supports illegal immigration with half of his caucus.  And yet, his base is the loudest about it being illegal.

His “base” feels very much the same way about him as progressives feel about Max Baucus.  They can’t stand him, and the day after the election, Limbaugh, Coulter, and friends all ascribed the Republican loss to him not being a Real Conservative™.  Even <strike>Joe</strike> Samuel the Not-Plumber threw him under the bus after last November’s spanking.

Despite my anger at McCain for semi-encouraging the violence and madness of his base, I did feel that the way he accepted Obama’s win was rather classy. As long as he doesn’t do anything ultra-shitty, I’ll feel like he came away with some dignity. As DTG in STL points out, he was in an impossible bind anyhow.

Despite my anger at McCain for semi-encouraging the violence and madness of his base, I did feel that the way he accepted Obama’s win was rather classy.

Eh, I don’t even quite give him that much credit.

I think his concession speech was very gracious and he behaved in a very deferential and dignified manner from Election Night until shortly after the Inauguration, but he’s been pretty cranky in the months since then, and has voted against just about every Obama-backed initiative that’s come his way, including the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor (which nine of his GOP colleagues, including his closest ally in the Senate, Lindsay Graham, voted for).

I give him credit for setting the BirthDeathBaggers straight today regarding the constitutionality of Obama’s healthcare plans, but all in all, he seems to be a fairly bitter man, though I imagine that bitterness is split between the guy who won the election and the GOP base that threw him under the bus immediately after the election.

And one other thing… did John Kerry get anything like 15 Sunday Morning show gigs in the nine months after he lost the election to Shrub in 2004?  Can’t seem to recall that happening.  I blame that more on the “liberal” media, though.

Not that I have any love for McCain or his policies (although some of those policies were less loathsome before he had to go back on everything he believed in to try and get elected), but at least he has stood up to crowds of insane people booing him and said, “You guys, Obama isn’t a secret Muslim” and now that Obama is respecting the Constitution. It’s more than some other Republican politicians have done (I’m thinking specifically of that video of the guy from what was it, HuffPo?, chasing after Republicans in DC, almost none of whom would admit that Obama was an American citizen).

McCain still says bullshit, but he says it in a way that pisses off the crazed base so it gets him points for being The Maverick.  Really, his talk about bipartisanship?  Has the GOP shown any willingness to work with Democrats on anything lately?  Anything?  Not that I’ve seen.

He’s gotten more in line with his party since his defeat in November, not shown any of his fabled (because it doesn’t really exist) independence.  If he wanted to, he could work for some bipartisanship, but he won’t.  Why not?  He’s either a coward, a liar, or someone afraid of a primary challenger when he’s up for reelection.

He’s gotten more in line with his party since his defeat in November, not shown any of his fabled (because it doesn’t really exist) independence.  If he wanted to, he could work for some bipartisanship, but he won’t.  Why not?  He’s either a coward, a liar, or someone afraid of a primary challenger when he’s up for reelection.

He was bipartisan to the extent that he was one of the two lead sponsors on the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act and the proposed McCain-Kennedy Immigration Reform Bill.

Both of these pieces of legislation could be regarded as fairly bipartisan in scope, and both of those bills caught him a tremendous amount of hell among the Reichwing base, because they both advocated policy which is antithetical to the reactionary dogma promoted by the current GOP.

Those two things are largely what he has hung his “Maverick” hat on, and to his credit, both of those bills were far more progressive than what you would typically expect to come from the avergae wingnut legislator.

That said, I think he’s currently being driven by intense feelings of bitterness, both towards the young Democrat who defeated him last November, and the Republican Base who has largely shat on him for the past several years… but all of the effects of that bitterness is being directed to the Obama White House.  I think sometimes he’s still trying to “prove himself” to the wingnuts, but in reality, they don’t like him, and they never will.

Remember, before he named Sarah Palin as his running mate, he couldn’t get more than a few dozen people to show up to his rallies, and Limbaugh and Coulter were all but saying that they weren’t gonna vote for anybody last year (Coulter actually said she would rather vote for Hillary Clinton than John McCain)... Palin will always be remembered as the star of that ticket in the hearts and minds of the wingnut base.

The guy’s gotta be one of the loneliest members of the U.S. Senate.  We don’t really like him very much, and neither do most Republicans.  Which totally explains his close friendship with Joe Lieberman.

As for him losing his seat… fairly unlikely.  A lot of Arizonans love the guy, and he’ll probably coast to an easy victory next year - he’s one of the safest Republicans up for re-election in all of the 2010 Senate races.  Had she not accepted the Homeland Security job, Janet Napolitano could have given him a run for his money, but she’s the only Democrat from that state who would have been able to realistically compete against him.

Campaign finance reform may be something to hang a hat on for Maverickosity, but that’s really all there is.  The immigration bill wasn’t going anywhere, he knew it fairly quickly, and he just uses it for some sort of Hispanic cover back home while he still supports people like Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Still, the Democrats in Arizona don’t have much to put against him.  So a primary challenger is what he’d fear most, which makes him unable to take any steps toward any bipartisanship.  His risk-taking days are something he gave up in his early seventies, apparently.

The guy’s gotta be one of the loneliest members of the U.S. Senate.  We don’t really like him very much, and neither do most Republicans.  Which totally explains his close friendship with Joe Lieberman.

see, now I feel like a jerk for not liking him. Joey and John sit at their lunch table, sipping their juice boxes, waiting for recess. Joey got a cupcake and wants to trade for some chips, but no one talks to either of them. So they sit by themselves until recess, where they get picked lass for kickball before the free-play time starts, and they both go to sit at the jungle gym and wait until the bell rings.

RIP Senator Kennedy. 

The woman who said that calling McCain his name by mistake was a “promotion” is a friend of mine.  What a cool thing for her to say that on the day he passed away.

incidentally, how fucked is our health care dreams now that Kennedy died?

as in, just died.

RIP Senator Kennedy.

The man will go down as one of the greatest U.S. Senators in history.

The immigration bill wasn’t going anywhere, he knew it fairly quickly, and he just uses it for some sort of Hispanic cover back home while he still supports people like Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Arpaio is a monumental pile of shit to be sure, but you would be shocked how many people in the Phoenix Metro - including a fair number of Democrats - continue to vote that guy in year after year.  And it isn’t that the Phoenix Metro is overwhelmingly Republican.  It definitely leans conservative, but like any huge city - it’s the 5th biggest city in the U.S. behind Houston, Chicago, LA, and New York - there’s a pretty strong liberal-leaning core of cross-country transplants.

The argument I heard while I lived out there for the first half of this summer went something like this, “Yeah, Sheriff Joe is a gigantic asshole, but have you noticed that there is no such thing as a bad neighborhood in Phoenix… anywhere?”

And as much as I’m disinclined to give an asshole like that credit for anything, it’s true, there really aren’t many high crime neighborhoods in the Phoenix Metro.  Sure there are some, like any major city, but it isn’t like Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis, New Orleans, Chicago or really any other major city I’ve ever been to before.

That said, if I had stayed out there long term, I could never justify supporting that POS.  Low crime rates or not, the ends most certainly doesn’t justify the means.  And while he may have some success in scaring the crap out of the Phoenix population into being fairly law-abiding, he’s also committed more than a handful of human rights atrocities in the process.

incidentally, how fucked is our health care dreams now that Kennedy died?

as in, just died.

Unless they resort to reconciliation, Harry Reid is gonna have to be doing some major ass-kissing of Sen. Olympia Snowe.

Massachusetts will not hold a special election to fill the seat until January 2010.

I still await the major GOP head explosions that will occur when Senator Frank shows up.

As for the Phoenix metropolitan area not having any bad neighborhoods, where did you live?  Paradise Valley?  Did you ever leave home?

Try looking into the Indian reservations, try one of the highest rates of identity theft in the nation, try huge amounts of car thefts, try an overcrowded jail, try an emphasis on illegal immigrants that leads to sweeps of Hispanic arrests that have been proven to include US citizens who dare go out without the proper papers (as if that’s enough when there’s so much identity theft,) try a corrupt sheriff’s office that has never been audited, try a corrupt sheriff who actually arrests political opponents if they speak out against him (and the editor of The Phoenix New Times and Village Voice,) try a Maricopa County prison telephone system that automatically records conversations between inmates and their lawyers, try a county attorney that says that those recordings are never listened to and it wouldn’t matter anyway since the guy was found guilty in a trial, and try the fact that all phone conversations in the prison were recorded and the computer files and the computer servers just disappeared.  Then tell me the sheriff is doing a good job, and enjoy the green bologna if you don’t say you love Big Sheriff with enough fervor during the Two Minutes Hate.  The man’s a menace, he’s doing a tough guy act rather than hard work, and he really is scum.

I went to a town hall meeting last night, and what surprised me the most is that 3/4 percent of the people there were supporters of health care reform.  I know from polls that that most Americans want health care reform, but news coverage of these town halls makes it seem like only the opposers go, which just isn’t true.  I wasn’t surprised that opposers were very rude and childish, and kept interrupting.  However, it turns out that boos are louder than clapping.  I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed, that people would boo McCain for saying something true about Obama.

Since the folks with guns at town halls have been in Arizona, I certainly wouldn’t mind if you or Amanda skewer McArdle’s latest lame-o blog entry about guns at town halls. I don’t know about everyone else, but I could use the pick me up today since health care reform and liberals in general lost our greatest champion.

As for the Phoenix metropolitan area not having any bad neighborhoods, where did you live?  Paradise Valley?  Did you ever leave home?

Mesa.

Mesa is a craphole.  Not a crime-ridden craphole, but still a soulsucking place with tract homes and cookie-cutter strip malls filled with the same thing block after block after oh!another-Mormon-Temple block.  I’m biased, coming from the place where dreams go to die (Tucson, see Hamlet 2, filmed in Albuquerque, for details.)  But I’m still very correct.

Mesa is a craphole.  Not a crime-ridden craphole, but still a soulsucking place with tract homes and cookie-cutter strip malls filled with the same thing block after block after oh!another-Mormon-Temple block.  I’m biased, coming from the place where dreams go to die (Tucson, see Hamlet 2, filmed in Albuquerque, for details.) But I’m still very correct.

It is a craphole.  But as you said, not a crime-ridden craphole, which was my original point.

I went out there from St. Louis, MO where nearly 1/3 of the city just isn’t very safe to drive around once the sun goes down.  And I say that as someone who has friends who live in those very unsafe neighborhoods and has driven around at night in those unsafe neighborhoods in St. Louis.  And all my liberal beliefs and awareness of my own white privilege doesn’t negate the fact that yes, those neighborhoods just aren’t particularly safe to be wandering around in late at night.  They aren’t bad neighborhoods because the inhabitants are innately bad people - in fact, the vast majority are generally very fine and decent people just struggling to get by in a world which is especially cruel to you if you are poor and black.  They are bad neighborhoods because the odds of being the victim of a crime are drastically higher than in other parts of the city… the murder rate is insane in North St. Louis.  And it’s fucking tragic.  And it’s the product of Reichwing ideology put into practice.  But it’s also an undeniable reality.  North St. Louis is considered very dangerous because it is in fact very dangerous.

Anyway, back to my point… living out in Phoenix (for the six weeks I was there), I noticed that there was no area that mimicked the hell that is North St. Louis.  And I noticed that the prevailing attitude of most Phoenicians and residents of the surrounding suburbs about Arpaio was the concession that while he is an asshole, his county isn’t filled with the kind of violent crime that are more commonplace in a lot of other major cities, which is why he always gets re-elected year after year, despite being an enormous pile of shit.

Now I don’t know how true the claims are about violent crime in Maricopa County, but I did notice that there didn’t seem to be any neighborhoods comparable to the most dangerous neighborhoods I have encountered in other older Midwestern and Eastern major cities.

Like I said initially, regardless of whether or not the perception about crime rates in Maricopa County is true, I certainly would never vote for a fuckhead like Arpaio, so I hope you don’t think I was trying to claim that he was a good guy, because that certainly wasn’t my intent.  He’s a monumental asshole, and his despicable antics were well-known to me long before I ever lived in Arizona.

DTG, I didn’t think you were standing up for Arpaio so much as describing the attitude that allows him to get elected over and over.  Still, there are areas of Metropolitan Phoenix that have poverty and misery and desperation at levels I don’t enjoy to visit.  They aren’t too close to Mesa, but they’re there.

And before anyone says otherwise, Tucson has some dangerous neighborhoods as well.  Part of what keeps places such as Tucson and Phoenix (and probably many others as well, but I won’t name them if I haven’t seen it first hand) from becoming as bad as what you describe North St. Louis as being is that the desert Southwest is mostly filled with recent arrivals.  Plus we’re mobile even in our home towns, have few roots, and don’t have nearly as many generations of crappy living conditions to beat an area down to the point where it gets to the point where everybody knows not to go there.  There are places that will probably get there soon, and some would argue that the South Side of Tucson is dangerous as is West Phoenix, but from working at a prison I can say that it’s rare for criminal families in Arizona to go beyond two generations.  At least so far.  Also, the zoning makes it hard for an area in sprawled out metropolises like Tucson and Phoenix to get too much criminal behavior in as concentrated an area as is possible elsewhere.  But again, give it time.