Posted on 08/13/2010 2:56:26 PM PDT by devane617
GREEN VALLEY, Ariz. — Times are strange for a recovering maverick.
"You've been the first one who's run across the aisle," a woman seated in front of Sen. John McCain said accusingly.
"Do you have a question?" he snapped. "Do you have a question, really?"
"How can we believe you now if in the past you were so different?"
The question could have come from any of the 150 people who filled a rec center in this retirement community 30 minutes south of Tucson. Even among loyalists, it looms.
Who is the real John McCain?
The 2008 Republican presidential nominee is facing his toughest re-election battle in years and has responded with a harder conservative persona, talking tough about border security and government spending at every town hall he conducts.
Earlier this year McCain bizarrely declared, "I never considered myself a maverick," though he long ago acquired the label — and reveled in it — for a willingness to work with Democrats on immigration and campaign finance reform, and to challenge his party, a rebellious fighter pilot turned politician.
The reinvented McCain has all but disowned past work on immigration. He recently helped block legislation to improve transparency of corporate money in campaigns.
Such are the currents of the 2010 midterm elections.
Moderate Republicans are trapped between voters who want more cooperation in Washington and tea party types demanding universal opposition to the Democratic agenda.
Some, like Gov. Charlie Crist, have chosen to veer from the right, despite playing up that side in his bid to become McCain's vice presidential running mate. Crist felt the tea party heat and left the Republican Party to run for U.S. Senate as an independent. But most have gone the way of McCain, who started to drift right in his presidential run.
Confronting McCain is J.D. Hayworth, a former congressman and radio host who brands himself "the consistent conservative." Attaching himself to the tea party, Hayworth is attacking McCain's work on immigration reform, which included a path toward citizenship some consider "amnesty," support for climate change legislation and for opposing a constitutional ban on gay marriage.
Polls and fundraising suggest McCain will win the Aug. 24 primary. But Hayworth remains enough of a problem that McCain is working tirelessly to ensure he returns to Washington for a fifth term. Earlier this year, when the race was tighter, McCain had to call in Sarah Palin, his 2008 running mate, to lend tea party credibility, a remarkable change of fortune.
• • •
McCain pops from library to senior center to cookout, talking to small- and medium-sized groups, only a few staff members in tow. The media horde that used to hang on his every word is gone, as is the energetic theme music. The crowd that showed up to an elementary school in Mesa on a recent Friday waited to the easy groove of Miles Davis.
It's a stark difference from the presidential trail, a run that solidified his status as the most recognizable member of Congress. McCain, 73, is convinced he could have taken the country in a different direction. Certainly, it's hard to fathom a health care overhaul under his watch. The Supreme Court would not include Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan.
"I think voters were against his age and they saw a lot of promises in (Barack) Obama," said Jan Haeger, 75, a McCain supporter. "He should have been president. We would be in a better place."
McCain masks disappointment with humor. "After I lost the election, I slept like a baby," he said in Mesa. "Sleep two hours, wake up and cry. Sleep two hours, wake up and cry."
After meeting with workers at a new Home Depot distribution center in Tolleson, outside Phoenix, McCain conceded the defeat still weighs on him. "But you have to respect the verdict of the people. As soon as the election was over, I started back here in Arizona knowing I would have a tough re-election fight. I could tell the people were very unhappy."
• • •
McCain channels unease into two areas: government spending and immigration. He has long disavowed pork barrel spending, a hallmark of his former maverick status. He flashes that today, saying Republicans lost control because they ran up debt.
But the anger is reserved for Obama and Democrats, who he tells crowds are endangering the future of children. He bashes the stimulus — "a total failure" — and bailouts, even though he voted for the $700 billion bank rescue. McCain now says he was misled.
Not long ago, McCain was leading the way with Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy on comprehensive legislation that would have created a path to citizenship for millions of illegal residents. Conservatives viewed the 2007 plan, and McCain, as weak. So he started to emphasize border security in the presidential race and now says it must come before anything else, even promising to filibuster legislation.
McCain has endorsed Arizona's tough new law that would require people to carry papers and present them if stopped for a crime. He has called for hearings into changing the 14th Amendment, which gives citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.
At town halls, someone inevitably asks about his past support for "amnesty," a word that draws McCain's ire. When a woman wondered what could be done for the millions who have been in the United States a long time, McCain tersely replied, "They broke our laws by coming here illegally no matter when they came here." The crowd applauded.
Even at his age (his 74th birthday is five days after the primary) McCain displays the scrappy side that endeared him to so many. Smartly dressed in a navy blazer, khaki pants and expensive black Italian loafers, he energetically paced the rec center for more than an hour, answering questions with humor and tenacity.
"Show me one place where I'm wrong. Facts are stubborn things, my friend," he challenged a man who suggested he was running a dirty campaign. McCain has highlighted Hayworth's pork barrel inclinations as a member of Congress and ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Outside, standing in a parking lot that oozed with heat, Dick Hengl, 72, also paced — with a protest sign. "He's a Democrat in Republican clothing," said Hengl, who spends several hours a day walking the desert looking for illegal immigrants, border patrol on his cell phone speed dial.
"I held my nose and voted for him for president," Hengl said. He said support for Hayworth is stronger than McCain in Green Valley but conceded that sentiment is not true statewide.
Indeed, the latest polls show McCain with a commanding lead, and the hard right turn has played a role. But victory may come at a steep price.
"His image is really one big fuzzy thing now," said David Berman, senior research fellow at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University. "He jumped so far to the right, I don't know how he's ever going to get back to the middle."
Too little, too late.
He had ample opportunity to find his nuts when he ran against Stroker.
Huck fim.
“You’ve been the first one who’s run across the aisle,” a woman seated in front of Sen. John McCain said accusingly.
***
Funniest thing I have read in long time!!!
"He jumped so far to the right, I don't know how he's ever going to get back to the middle."
As easily as slipping into a new pair of pajamas.
I’d love to buy her a beer.
The problem is, if you believe the polls, McCain is once again fooling a lot of the fools here in Arizona. Geeeesh!!!
It is one of the costumes in his closet. I hope the voters in Arizona notice just how moth eaten and ill fitting it is.
he’s a shoe-in for reelection...so sad...
Ah, yes, I finally believe him - this time...NOT! This guy is a chameleon and interested only in being a Senator (power). He has no ideas and no interest in Arizona except to be re-elected. Can you Arizonians get a clue?
Just as McCain can do this - insist that he’s changed to garner votes for reelection; he would have just as easily changed to snuggle up to the Democrats had he been elected in 2008.
People who will say or do anything cannot be trusted.
I don't know what to think of someone that's taken in a fifth or sixth time by this shyster.
If he fought one-tenth as hard against obama as he’s fighting against Hayworth, he’d be president today.
“get back to the middle”....behind closed doors he can give Pansey Graham his marching orders.
He’s faking it as hard as he can.
Fire the BUM in the Primary.
Then elect J.D. in November to the Senate.
The problem is, if you believe the polls, McCain is once again fooling a lot of the fools here in Arizona. Geeeesh!!!
The bigger problem is all the GOP Liberal RINOs who are backing McCain....including Sarah Palin. Obviously, if she was a real conservative, as her supporters claim, she would not be supporting McCain
Just that atrocity McCain- Feingold legislation alone should have put the final nail in his coffin years ago.
Where McCain is pretending to be is the middle not the right.
McCain will return to the ruling class in Washington without batting an eye as he does each election year.
Thanks a lot Sarah Palin.
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