When McCain lost to Bush in the 2000 primaries I recall he was quite bitter about it and for some time was prone to criticism of the Bush administration in a rather petulant manner. Yet with Obama, he’s already out there with the raching across the aisle stuff. Which party is it he really belongs in again?
McCain has always fought against the republicans. When he won the nomination he realized that he’d have to start attacking his ‘friends’ on the other side of the aisle.
Soon after he determined that it was better to lose with honor than to fight and win the election by calling out the democrats.
Pathetic - really - but then again, not unexpected by our favorite self-centered sr senator from az.
Perhaps this year's campaign was McCain's last stab in the back to the Republican party for dissing him in 2000.
“Yet with Obama, hes already out there with the raching across the aisle stuff. Which party is it he really belongs in again?”
He belongs in the RAPP. He’s the number one hip hop rapper for the Reach Across Pimp Party.
“When McCain lost to Bush in the 2000 primaries I recall he was quite bitter about it and for some time was prone to criticism of the Bush administration in a rather petulant manner. Yet with Obama, hes already out there with the raching across the aisle stuff. Which party is it he really belongs in again?”
To be fair, the attacks McCain had to endure in 2000 were of the highly personal nature and represented slander and character assassination (has black love child, had affairs Cindy McCain does not know about, etc.) without any shred of proof provided. Politics is a rough game, but I would imagine that being attacked in that fashion felt a lot different than what he had to hear this time around.
Not that McCain’s policies are worth a damn, I am just comparing the two different campaign cycles, and I would imagine the first one was a bit more personally damaging for McCain for a while longer because of the highly personal nature of the attacks against him.
McCain was bitter about the nasty, underhanded campaign tactics in South Carolina. He had a right to be. The "black child with a New York prostitute" stories would have set anyone off. In South Carolina they didn't say "black child" and they didn't say "prostitute". The goobers took it as gospel because a lot of it was spread in the churches. I would have been pissed, too.
But what did McCain do? He turned around and campaigned for Bush. In Nevada, in Ohio and in Florida, close states where McCain was popular and Bush not so. He sucked it up and worked his heart out. For Bush. For the Party.
Remember Florida? A few hundred votes and Al Gore would have been President Gore. President Gore on 9/11. How many votes did McCain swing? Certainly hundreds, probably thousands, and possibly tens of thousands. Without McCain George W. Bush would have been fish bait.
They had policy differences and McCain did what he could to advance his own ideas in the Senate. He opposed the Farm Bill, just as he always had. He opposed the Highway Bill, just as he always had. He opposed the Pill Bill, just as he always had. Petulant? Maybe somewhat. He wasn't George W. Bush's lapdog.