Conservatives: Beware of McCain Regression Syndrome (McCain wants to hijack GOP, Tea Party)

KTKZ AM 1380 Sacramento, Calif. ^ | 2010-01-21 | Michelle Malkin

[rabscuttle385]

Pay attention: In the afterglow of the Massachusetts Miracle, there are flickers of peril for the right. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but like Paul Revere’s midnight message, consider this warning “a cry of defiance, and not of fear.” Conservatives have worked hard to rebuild after Big Government Republican John McCain’s defeat. But McCain isn’t going gently into that good night.

Red Flag No. One: A reader from Arizona informed me the day after the Bay State Bombshell that he had received a robo-call from Massachusetts GOP Sen.-elect Scott Brown. “He basically wanted me to vote for John McCain in November,” the reader said in his description of the automated campaign call supporting the four-term Sen. McCain’s re-election bid. “No wonder [Brown] said he hadn't had any sleep. … He was busy recording phone messages!”

Red Flag No. Two: Also in the wake of the Massachusetts special election, the nation’s most popular conservative political figure Sarah Palin announced she would be campaigning for her former running mate in Arizona in March. Palin told Facebook followers that she’s going to “ride the tide with commonsense candidates” and help “heroes and statesmen” like McCain.

Facing mounting conservative opposition in his home state and polls showing him virtually tied with possible GOP challenger and former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, McCain welcomed the boost: "Sarah energized our nation and remains a leading voice in the Republican Party."

Savor the irony: After a career spent bashing the right flank of the party, McCain is now clinging to its coattails to save his incumbent hide.

And pay attention to the hidden, more troubling irony: While he runs to the right to protect his seat, McCain’s political machine is working across the country to install liberal and establishment Republicans to secure his legacy.

In Florida, McCain’s Country First Political Action Committee is supporting the Senate bid of fellow illegal alien amnesty supporter and global warming alarmist GOP Gov. Charlie Crist, whose crucial 2008 primary endorsement rescued McCain from disaster. Grassroots conservatives support former GOP state House leader Marco Rubio -- who is hitting Crist hard for lying to voters about his embrace of President Obama’s pork-laden, fraud-ridden stimulus package.

In Colorado, McCain and his meddlers infuriated the state party by anointing former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton to challenge endangered Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet. She’s a milquetoast public official who has served on a lot of task forces and GOP clubs -- and who happens to be the sister-in-law of big Beltway insider Charlie Black. An estimated 40 percent of her coffers are filled with out-of-state money (and much of that is flowing from the Beltway).

The mini-McCain of Colorado claims to oppose “special interests,” but has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from D.C. lobbyists at McCain’s behest -- stifling the candidacies of strong conservative rivals led by grassroots-supported Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, an amnesty opponent whose aggressive illegal-immigration prosecutions have earned him the rage of the far left and big-business right. A recent Rasmussen poll showed Buck and GOP candidate Tom Wiens beating Bennet -- despite the huge cash and crony advantage of frontrunner and blank-slate Norton.

In California, McCain’s PAC supports former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina -- a celebrity name with deep pockets of her own, massive media exposure and a checkered business record. Fiorina served as the economic adviser to McCain, who supported the $700 billion TARP bailout, the $25 billion auto bailout, a $300 billion mortgage bailout and the first $85 billion AIG bailout. As GOP rival and grassroots-supported Chuck DeVore’s camp notes, Fiorina has also vacillated publicly over the Obama stimulus. With taxpayer “friends” like this, who needs Democrats?

With all due respect to McCain’s noble war service, it’s time to head to the pasture. As the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, he was wrong on the constitutionality of the free-speech-stifling McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulations. He was wrong to side with the junk-science global warming activists in pushing onerous carbon caps on America. He was on the wrong side of every Chicken Little-driven bailout. He was wrong in opposing enhanced CIA interrogation methods that have saved countless American lives and averted jihadi plots. And he was spectacularly wrong in teaming with the open-borders lobby to push a dangerous illegal alien amnesty.

Tea Party activists are rightly outraged by Palin’s decision to campaign for McCain, whose entrenched incumbency and progressive views are anathema to the movement. At least she has an excuse: She’s caught between a loyalty rock and a partisan hard place. The conservative base has no such obligations -- and it is imperative that they get in the game (as they did in Massachusetts) before it’s too late. The movement to restore limited government in Washington has come too far, against all odds, to succumb to McCain Regression Syndrome now.

[homegroan]

yup-he has to go. i don’t care WHO robo-calls me.

[Sarabaracuda]

Why don’t you rationally address my post instead of acting like a drama queen?

[fieldmarshaldj]

Madam, you do grave and wanton insult to Gov. Palin and the Conservative cause. What is crystal clear from your posts is that you are not only not a Conservative, but are indeed a troll. Your rationalizations, hypocrisies, flame-baiting comments and revisionist history talking points indicate you’ve only come to this website to cause enormous harm to Conservatives, to insult Gov. Palin, her family and her cause, and to incite divisions here.

You’ve been corrected repeatedly by myself and others, and persist in your despicable behavior. I strongly urge you to move on from this website, because your intellectually insulting and flamebait comments are unappreciated. You want to shill for the backstabber and slanderer of Gov. Palin, go start your own website.

[b9]

Arizona is a state which has reelected John McCain for decades.

That's a FACT.

[Sarabaracuda]

You’re erecting a straw man here. I never said Republicans can do no wrong. I simply said that McCain is still a Republican regardless of how what you think of his beliefs. A Republican is simply someone who belongs to the Republican party. Are you really arguing otherwise?

[mkjessup]

I will not report your beligerent postings to me so as to allow the decent Freepers viewing this a chance to see how you purists treat those who disagree with you.

Oh I'm really quaking troll.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

McCain is still a Republican regardless of how what you think of his beliefs.

I left the Republican party when McCain was nominated.

McCain is a socialist pile of crap.

[mkjessup]

Why don’t you rationally address my post instead of acting like a drama queen?

Classic liberal projection. You put your reasoning faculties into deep freeze, suspend your common sense, and do what you're told (which is to support John McCain) just because your idol that you worship with every breath is endorsing McCain.

You get called on your obvious trolling in this thread, and now Bill Loman is a 'drama queen'?

You're incapable of debating the issues, your responses have all the intellectual depth of a dessert plate.

Now tell us YOUR definition of 'conservatism', ok?

[fieldmarshaldj]

This troll hasn’t quite got it that this isn’t the IheartJohnMcCain fanclub. Watching it threaten well-respected senior posters who have been here for years is a real hoot. Time to call out the Viking Kitties to ZOT the twit.

[mkjessup]

I admire your attempt to reason with a troll, FRiend.

This is going to end badly for her, first when the inevitable big ZOT arrives, and then later when she either removes her blinders or has them removed and realizes that she has been played for a fool by the likes of McCain and his sycophants.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Hehe... 3 seconds. ;-)

[paulycy]

He is an angry purist who is trying to turn the board against all those who do not fit his narrow-minded definition of conservative.

FReepers don't attack other FReepers on a personal level. On several posts you have made this kind of ad hominum attack which is both poor form and against forum rules. Also, trying to turn the forum against someone who's been around here awhile and is respected is really quite questionable behavior.

You certainly don't have to march in lockstep with anybody here - there are Sarah foes and (very few) McCain supporters but the *manner* in which you argue is *very* important. FReepers debate, they don't fight. (Well, at least we try...)

[Sarabaracuda]

So what exactly does a person have to do to be considered a conservative or even a moderate by you or the other members of Team Pure?

[mkjessup]

This troll hasn’t quite got it that this isn’t the IheartJohnMcCain fanclub. Watching it threaten well-respected senior posters who have been here for years is a real hoot. Time to call out the Viking Kitties to ZOT the twit.

Ahhhh c'mon FMDJ, I'm just getting warmed up here! LOL

McCain is a collaborating, compromising liberal RINO and the people of Arizona will hopefully have a choice between a REAL conservative and Republican (J.D. Hayworth) and one who just plays one on TV and kisses the asses of our domestic enemies:

It is TIME for McCain to GO!

[mkjessup]

So what exactly does a person have to do to be considered a conservative or even a moderate by you or the other members of Team Pure?

Start by explaining what conservatism is to you and what your definition of it happens to be.

That is the challenge to you and to any aspiring member of 'Team Zombie'

[fieldmarshaldj]

Well, it’s always important for others to see when a troll posts talking points and twisted rationalizations and falsehoods that they be swiftly addressed and rebuked. If said poster were intellectually honest and came to have such a like-minded discussion, we’d be able to swiftly disavow them of such notions that supporting McCain is in any way logical or in the best interests of either the Conservative cause, let alone the nation.

Most of us here know, and as I explained in an earlier post, the double-standard applied to Gov. Palin, in that she is expected to endorse a man for whom has shown her absolutely zero respect from after his selection of her. He and his groin leaches to the cause of Conservatism have privately and publicly degraded her and her family, and he is NEVER called to task for this by the media or the political establishment.

I understand the position she is in with this, but she shows far more class and dignity with this “endorsement” than McCain has EVER shown to her. That’s the difference between Sarah Palin and McCain. I’m sure her supporters (like me) understand 100% what’s going on, and why nearly all of us will be supporting J.D. Hayworth when he runs, and why she will be VERY happy to see Hayworth as our Republican nominee for November.

[Sarabaracuda]

Now McCain is a socialist? I don’t think even I would go that far. How so?

[Lazamataz]

I can understand Brown supporting McCain. We need every Senator, no matter how RINO. I can understand Palin supporting McCain. It's a personal debt.

But I cannot understand any American, any Conservative, supporting McCain.

[DoughtyOne]

McCain is a member of the Republican party so therefore he is a Republican.

Yes, and if he doesn't support traditional Republican or God forbid Conservative values, he is a Republican in name only. That is a RINO.

Arguing otherwise, regardless of his ideological stances, is ludicrous.

Regardless of his ideological stances? The only questions left to ask here are whether you're on the McCain payroll, or if you're here at the bequest of the RNC or DNC?

You're not being honest and you're acting the part of a leftist disrupter.

[mkjessup]

Excellent points. And I would mention again that with Sarah’s new gig on Fox News, that IF J.D. Hayworth chooses to run against McCain in the GOP primary that her high profile endorsement of McCain, combined with her presence on Fox could be interpreted as a continuing political advertisement benefiting McCain, which would require Fox to offer equal time to J.D. Hayworth, i.e., everyone knows Sarah is endorsing McCain, every time she appears on the tube that message is reinforced to McCain’s benefit, and to Hayworth’s detriment.