This morning I was listening to NPR while I got ready for work, as usual, and there was a short piece on John McCain. The reporter claimed, “McCain was once the frontrunner in this race,” “this race” meaning the way-too-long primary race to see who will be next year’s presidential nominee, in this case for the Republicans. When I heard that I had to pause, and said so myself, “Seriously? The frontrunner?” I mean, come on! When was McCain ever the frontrunner for the Republican nomination - 1999? Certainly not at any time this primary season that I was aware of. I think, for a while, he was the only well-known name who it was clear was going to enter the race, but even then people seemed to be waiting around for “something better.” The story on NPR went on to blame his subsequent “slide” in public opinion on some unpopular positions on immigration and a supposed “meltdown” in his campaign last summer, when a bunch of staffers were let go.
Meltdown, right. It’s called “we’re not raising any money and I can’t afford to pay all you lackeys!”
From my perspective, John McCain was once a very viable candidate. But, again, that was back in 1999. He used to stand for something - for independent thinking, for straight talk, for not kowtowing to the Republican machine. The way Karl Rove engineered his smearing in that primary was sickening (it started with “rumors” that McCain’s adopted daughter was actually his biological, illegitimate daughter from an affair, and went downhill from there). If there’s any Republican in the world who should hate George W. Bush as much as I do, it’s John McCain.
Instead, McCain has become a Bush loyalist.
His biggest line now, the whole principal he seems to be running on is, “We’re actually winning in Iraq, and we can’t give up now!” That’s a pretty unpopular position on all ends of the political spectrum, but McCain doggedly pursues it. It’s his “signature” stand. What a waste.
One of the voters interviewed during the NPR story said something like, “You kind of have to admire him for sticking to his convictions.” Um…OK. Like, all those people who thought the Earth was flat, even though there was overwhelming evidence that it was not, we should admire them, because they “stuck to their convictions” no matter how ill-informed, ignorant, and wrong they were. (Insert your own obvious fallacy and group of stubborn, ignorant individuals who still believe it here, there are hundreds to choose from.)
Anyway, obviously I’m not going to be voting for John McCain any time soon. I don’t vote in the Republican primary anyway, but even if he somehow came from way behind and was the nominee in the general election, I wouldn’t vote for him. Sadly, there was a time when I would have, but I honestly believe he was a different candidate, and a different person, back then. Now he’s just another shill for the administration, and has lost all credibility. He’s a stubborn old man who has sold out to a bunch of corrupt chickenhawks.
And even though I’m not a Republican, and as a rule, I dislike Republicans intensely, that makes me sad.
