Posted on 03/12/2010 11:55:35 PM PST by rabscuttle385
U.S. Sen. John McCain said it’s too early to know whether Republicans will seize control of Congress this fall or if voters will retire President Barack Obama after one term.
But the 2008 Republican presidential nominee said the federal spending excesses of his own party turned too many fiscal conservatives into independent voters.
“A lot of voters are becoming independents,” McCain, a two-time New Hampshire presidential primary winner, said Friday. “We blew a lot of opportunity during the Bush years in failing to show that we were fiscally responsible.
“We paid a price for it, and still haven’t been able to get those voters back who should naturally be Republicans.”
The GOP will make big gains in the midterm elections if Republican candidates go beyond tapping into voter anger about the economy and record budget deficits and offer forward- looking solutions to the country’s challenges, McCain said.
“I think it’s too early to know,” McCain said of chances for a Republican takeover on Capitol Hill.
“Campaigns matter, but I also think we Republicans have to have a positive agenda, and one that Americans believe in.”
McCain said Obama could take a lesson from former President Bill Clinton, who worked more closely with Republicans after he lost his own national health care crusade in Congress and then a majority in the U.S. House in the 1994 midterm elections.
“After ‘Hillary-care’ collapsed,” McCain said, “President Clinton moved dramatically to the center, enacted welfare reform, worked in a bipartisan way to produce a balanced budget.
“There is a precedent for a Democrat governing from the center who was successful. It will be very interesting to see what strategy this president adopts after the November elections.”
McCain returned to the state to host a fundraiser Friday and a town hall-style forum today at Pennichuck Middle School in Nashua with Republican Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte, of Nashua.
McCain doesn’t often take sides in Senate primaries, and he faces his own challenge for re-election from radio talk show host J.D. Hayworth, a former Arizona congressman.
“What really prompted me to weigh in was the quality of the candidate,” McCain said. “Kelly Ayotte is a person who represents what we want in the Republican Party and the U.S. Senate.
“I have known Kelly for quite a period of time, and been very impressed by her record as attorney general.”
Republican Senate rival Ovide Lamontagne has charged that McCain has joined the GOP establishment in backing Ayotte.
N.H. Democratic Party spokeswoman Emily Browne said Ayotte was a natural fit for McCain, as both oppose Obama’s national health care plan.
“Kelly Ayotte and John McCain have a lot in common these days,” Browne said in a statement.
“Both are facing contentious primaries, both are taking thousands from big insurance to shore up their campaigns and both have chosen – at every step on the road to real health care reform – to stand with insurance companies and corporate interests instead of struggling middle-class families and small businesses.”
McCain called “relatively meaningless” the four Republican-suggested changes Obama offered to the health care bill after a summit at which McCain and the president briefly squared off.
“The changes are relatively meaningless, especially since the House is going to have to vote on the Senate bill without any changes,” McCain said.
Senate Democratic leaders would make a serious mistake if they use reconciliation rules to try to pass a health care bill with a majority to overcome a threatened Republican filibuster, McCain said.
“I don’t know whether they ram it through or not,” he said. “All of the action is in the House to see if they can get the votes for the Senate bill.
“I think they would make a terrific mistake to enact a reform that represents one-sixth of the economy that polls show a majority of Americans do not want.”
McCain pointed out he worked with Senate Democrats to stop the Bush White House from using reconciliation to move on stalled federal judicial nominees.
“I was against it when I was in the majority,” McCain said.
McCain said he has met only in groups of other lawmakers with Obama and hasn’t had a single personal conversation with him.
“There has not been any personal contact that maybe some had expected,” McCain said.
As for Obama governing in a bipartisan way, McCain said he hasn’t seen it.
“After the election, the president and the Democratic leadership decided that they would govern without the Republicans, that they would not need any of us,” McCain said.
Kevin Landrigan can be reached at 321-7040 or klandrigan@nashuatelegraph.com.
McCain, you're a huge jackass.
“We blew a lot of opportunity during the Bush years in failing to show that we were fiscally responsible. We paid a price for it, and still haven’t been able to get those voters back who should naturally be Republicans.”
That has you upset?
I can’t believe that I voted for this jackass McCain. Obama was meant to be President, if only to show America how ugly the far left can be. I should have just abstained from a vote for President.
JD Hayworth, best of luck to you in AZ. Beat this worthless clown.
He is hurting himself with these comments.
McCain said he has met only in groups of other lawmakers with Obama and hasn’t had a single personal conversation with him.
You, McLettuce, had a reciprocal ‘we’re natural born citizens’ via SR 511 with Claire McCaskill and you have never had a personal conversation with him!?!?!
Can’t wait to see JD stomp you into the dirt.
Every thing that was highlighted was true. Obama does not have the political sense of Bill Clinton and the Republican did blow it.
It is just amazing how clueless McNuts is.
President Clinton moved dramatically to the center
Yeah, that really worked when we ran a "centrist" last time, di'n't it?
If a stranger looked at McCain without knowing his party affiliation, they'd think he was a dem.
The Mclettuce thing really did p*ss me off, but a lot has happened since then and I ended up voting for him a President. I actually think it was the Mclettuce thing that was going to cause me to sit the election out, but the Sarah was endorsed. The damning thing about the Mclettuce statement was that McCain pained himself as an elitist who is completely out of touch with the working class. People in the medical profession would give up their jobs if they could get $50/ hour picking lettuce. I don’t remember exactly what I was doing at the time, but I was willing to get on a plane an call that bluff.
There is a difference between blaming something on the Bush years and blaming something on Bush.
Why Glenn Beck, McCain and others cannot see the difference between a $200 billion deficit and a $1.4 trillion deficit, between seizing car companies and not seizing them, between nationalizing medical care and not nationalizing medical care, between passing a $800 billion "stimulus bill" which created make work projects and paid off government workers and opposing it is beyond me.
He never ever takes responsibility for being part of the problem.
They see the difference, because the difference is mathematical, but what they are complaining about is that the Republicans legislated contrary to their professed beliefs. They are also complaining that a trend was set in those years that led to the $1.4 trillion bailout. Cross swords with McCain for the right reasons.
That is true. McCain is a child in that respect, but so are most politicians.
I can’t see a difference - he’s just another ‘it’s Bush’s fault’ liberal. As when he loses it will be because of Bush and how the R’s are now independents - when he knows well enough its because of him and his RINO’s crew. Hey McCain - no mention of conservatives - I know, you’d rather gag!
No one in Washington takes resposibility for anything.They just form a big circle and point at the guy standing next to them.
What is wrong with John McCain is not his fiscal conservatism, it is his psychic need to depart from the understanding that it is partisanship itself which keeps the ship of state on course. His unaccountable psychological need to break bread with the enemy is not the expression of patriotism but the misguided pretensions of one whose ego, exactly like Lindsey Graham's, compel him to undermine the process. Two party system is essential to the proper working of the American democracy. Those who undermine the system undermine the republic. Although he does it unwittingly, John McCain is dangerous for this reason.
John McCain, like George bush and his father, believes that there is something smarmy about party politics. He believes bipartisanship is the essence of statesmanship. That is a backwards construct. Statesmanship is the art of leading through persuasion. Compromise is not a victory in itself but a defeat and an admission that the leader could not obtain the true and proper goal. The idea that compromising with the enemy is somehow the essence of democracy is wrong. The essence of democracy is convincing the corpus of the country that the enemy should be removed from power.
We want spirit of Cromwell but we have celebrated, although we will never admit it, the spirit of Chamberlain.
And has the audacity to threaten to re-deploy the Gang of 14!
And I DO NOT give him credit for introducing Sarah. Fred was planning on her as VP if he got it.
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