Posted on 08/28/2010 8:27:36 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
One of the most disliked, liberal Republicans in the Senate used money from conservatives who can't stand him to win reelection against the far more conservative candidate.
John McCain easily beat JD Hayworth in the Republican primary for Senate this year, but the reason why is disturbing. The vast majority of the money he spent, $18 million out of a total of almost $24 million, came from contributions to his prior presidential campaign, not this Senate campaign. Many people who contributed to his presidential campaign – including myself – contributed because of Sarah Palin, not McCain. To have our money used against a better conservative candidate we prefer in a different race is despicable. It was even more insulting for me personally since my money was used by McCain's staffers (who proudly refer to themselves as the "McCain Mafia") in vicious personal attacks against me, as Director of Social Media for Hayworth's campaign. By the end of the campaign, I had blocked almost every one of them on Twitter due to reprehensible behavior that was condoned (I believe encouraged) by their boss.
In contrast, Hayworth spent only $2.4 million. It was difficult for him to raise money because McCain had already locked in many high-level donors through threats and strong-arming. The McCain Mafia would accost potential contributors by warning them, "The Senator would be very disappointed if you did not contribute the full amount ($2,400 in the primary, or $4,800 per couple)."
In reality, McCain's record is terrible. He has an 81% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, which dipped to its lowest ever in 2008, 63%, due to voting for the billion dollar pork TARP bailouts. The main bills he has co-sponsored were left-leaning bills with Democrats: Cap and Trade with Joe Lieberman, amnesty with Ted Kennedy, and an assault on free speech with Russ Feingold.
McCain's second disturbing tactic was to aggressively smear JD Hayworth. He went after JD Hayworth in cruel ways vastly different from the soft approach he took with Obama. If McCain had ran against Obama as hard as he ran against JD, he would probably be president now. He falsely portrayed Hayworth as a liberal. It would be laughable if it hadn't been so effective. Because McCain could afford to run TV ads round the clock on Arizona's TV stations, he was able to fool a majority of Arizona's Republicans and Independents into believing he was the conservative in the race. In reality, JD Hayworth has a 98% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union over his 12 years in Congress – the same score as the most conservative member of the Senate, Jim DeMint! Over 16 Tea Parties, located mostly in Arizona, endorsed Hayworth. Virtually no Tea Parties endorsed McCain or the third Republican candidate, Jim Deakin.
Since McCain couldn't beat Hayworth substantively on the issues, he brought up red herrings instead. He accused Hayworth of being a big pork barrel spender and earmarker, blaming him for bills like the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska. The truth is that Hayworth wasn't behind any of those pork earmarks – those were regular bills (transportation, border security, appropriations, etc.) where other members of Congress had tacked on pork or earmarks. Contrast this with McCain's votes for the billion dollar pork TARP bailouts, and the military base earmarks McCain has brought home for Arizona and it is clear who the real porker/earmarker is. But due to Hayworth's lack of money, he was not able to get the truth out to enough voters.
McCain spent millions on a TV commercial blasting Hayworth as a fiscal hypocrite for appearing in an infomercial for free government grants. Again, JD did not have the money to get the full story out to the voters. The truth is that JD did hundreds of commercials as a radio talkshow host for a variety of businesses, and the prior spokesman for the grant company was former Representative JC Watts, who assured Hayworth it was a legitimate venture. McCain never attacked JC Watts. Hayworth was not advertising to expand government grants, he was simply advertising how to apply for them – just like one might advertise for school vouchers or tax credits. Conservatives may not agree with government set asides, but as long as we're stuck with the redistribution system, we might as well take advantage of every tax break we can. The real hypocrisy is that McCain has lengthy information posted on his website on how to apply for free government grant money.
Third, McCain threatened and shook down prominent conservatives into endorsing him. He enlisted Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney to campaign in Arizona for him. Insiders knew their campaigning was fake, since Mitt Romney had a bitter relationship with McCain during the presidential campaign, and Palin had not spoken to McCain in over a year since the presidential election. At first she wouldn't even take his phone calls. She notably failed to tweet about her visit even as she was tweeting about a concurrent trip to Searchlight, Nevada for a Tea Party rally against Harry Reid. She reportedly refused to come out and campaign a second time for him.
McCain threatened anyone with talent from working for Hayworth. Many well-respected political consultants turned down campaign positions on the Hayworth campaign due to threats to their careers from the McCain Mafia. I was threatened three times by the McCain Mafia, but fortunately the latter two threats were ineffective, since I had left my government position working for a politician, so my employment could not be put in jeopardy. As a result, the Hayworth team had a campaign staff of 10 to the McCain staff of 24.
National Review and Newsmax endorsed McCain, no doubt due to their publishers or managements' close ties to McCain. Mark Levin, who has written numerous articles for National Review exposing McCain's liberal record, wrote a response objecting to their flawed endorsement. McCain suckered Arizona Right to Life PAC, the NRA, and Citizens Against Government Waste into endorsing him even though Hayworth had higher ratings from them, and even though the vast majority of their constituents as well as most of their leadership preferred Hayworth. Much of their former leadership came out and endorsed Hayworth.
McCain and his team told countless prominent conservatives in Arizona who had endorsed him in the presidential general election that he was transferring their endorsements to the Senate race – even if those conservatives preferred Hayworth. When some of those conservatives objected, McCain's Mafia was vicious in their responses and forced many of them to back down. Some finally spoke up and defied McCain anyways, backing Hayworth.
There were additional factors that worked to McCain's advantage. One that undoubtedly helped was his POW status. It is difficult for some voters – particularly veterans – to fathom voting a POW out of office. Unlike other vulnerable Republican incumbents like Bob Bennett of Utah, McCain had this built-in protection, which he never ceased to mention in speeches. He failed to mention his terrible history of voting against veterans.
A third Republican candidate ran as a conservative and took votes away from Hayworth, Jim Deakin. Although Deakin had zero experience in politics, raised barely any money, and had a home in foreclosure proceedings, he refused to drop out of the race. As of the time this article is being written, with only a few thousand votes left to count, Deakin has garnered almost 12% of the vote.
The media wholeheartedly supported McCain, purposely giving scant coverage to the race – one of the hottest U.S. Senate races in the country – yet the talkshows had McCain as a guest every week to discuss other things. Even Fox News sold out, due to owner Rupert Murdoch's close friendship with McCain. McCain appeared on Fox News every week discussing everything but the race, sounding tough on border security with his past history of co-sponsoring amnesty with Ted Kennedy mostly overlooked. The print press limited its coverage of the race to mostly negative news about Hayworth.
When you do the math (there will be a few thousand more votes coming in after this article is written, so this number may drop ever so slightly) McCain paid $80 for each vote. What a champion of "campaign finance reform."
McCain isn't done spending money in this race. Many conservatives and Tea Partiers in Arizona are outraged and have decided to support a third party candidate. There is a Libertarian candidate, David Nolan, and a fairly conservative independent write-in candidate, Ian Gilyeat. Other JD supporters will just not vote, or will write in JD Hayworth.
This race will go down in history as one of the sleaziest bought out campaigns ever – John McCain's legacy.
Nobody likes sore losers. Nobody respects sore losers. After all, they’re losers.
That’s why I’ll never give another dime to the Republican party.
McCain; just another scumbug, “survive at any cost” politician/whore. Period. He has no philosophical basis or belief, conservative or otherwise, just blow in the wind, in any direction, so he can simply exist. I don’t think he has much in the IQ department either; and as much as I respect his POW record, he probably shouldn’t have been a Navy flyer to begin with (that was probably due to his father’s influence.) I partially blame the voters of Arizona, given the problems they’re facing, they’ve voted in the very person they should loath. Oh well, the Republicans, once again, not having their house in proper order...makes me shudder come November.
Nobody likes cheaters. Nobody respects cheaters. After all, they’re cheaters.
The Arizona senate primary is history. Shouldn’t you be moving on to the Ron Paul 2012 presidential campaign?
Then there is the fact that JD was not really a contender. The margin indicates he lacked the broad support required to be a Senator.
I don’t mind a sore loser when I see that they’ve been cheated. McCain is a Manchurian dirt bag who just spent MY MONEY, which was only sent by me because of Sarah Palin, to win an election over a much better man.
The only reason McCain even ran for president was because of Rats crossing over and voting for him in primaries. which still pi**es me off to no end.
Left over campaign money should go to charity not in turn coats purse.
That would be cuter if there had been actual cheating. Playing hard against an ineffectual candidate isn't cheating, it's politics. You may be confusing elections with the Special Olympics where the feelings of the hopeless players must be given special consideration. Pick candidates voters can take seriously or don't bother. Or at the very least, don't whine when the day of the inevitable result is reached. As the picture illustrates, FR once understood this concept.
why did McCain beat Hayworth?
It’s simple: the voters in Az are stupid.
It’s funny how Mr. Campaign Finance Reform has no problem using money from his presidential war chest on his Senate run.
A majority of 'em. Not me, not my wife, not any of my friends. Still, a stinkin' majority.
“Then there is the fact that JD was not really a contender. The margin indicates he lacked the broad support required to be a Senator.”
I think that’s a fair criticism. We should be looking at how we change our behavior in the future. Conservatives need to put up and then FUND good candidates to beat liberal R’s in the primaries. We didn’t do that in AZ.
The support of the R money for someone like McCain is going to happen whether we like it or not. There’s a reason the establishment money goes to RINO’s or D’s. RINO’s and D’s vote to give taxpayer money back to the establishment money guys many times over. OTOH, actual conservatives do not produce a very good return on investment for the establishment money.
So if conservatives are ever going to be more than a political niche, we have to open our pocketbooks in the primaries. And, we have to get our guys into lower offices where they can practice not falling on their faces in a press conference. That way, there’s a bench to go to when a Senate seat opportunity against a RINO opens up.
Not tripping on your tie in press-conferences is a learned skill and our bench is pretty weak after eight years of purges by the Bush folks.
he was able to fool a majority of Arizona’s Republicans and Independents into believing he was the conservative in the race.
His track record proves differently.
OH MY GOD..LET IT GO. He won...He won. I spent the last months working my ass off for JD Hayworth and when McCain won I LET IT GO...Geez. We are winning on so many fronts, to obsess about this is ridiculous. The fact of the matter is that McCain wants a legacy, he does not have a positive one right now. He will vote on the side of the power. That’s who he is...LET IT BE.
Can’t wait to hear McCain talk about campaign finance reform again...(snicker)
It would be one thing if it was his personal money, like Whitman and Poizner here in California.
But Johnny's not like that. He married the money, from one of the sleaziest families in Arizona (google "Don Bolles"...we all remember the summer of '76). So gaming the system is sorta normal to him, and he thinks he's entitled.
I was born and raised in Arizona and left before McCain ever saw the place. I remember it when it was American, not Mexican. McCain arrived when the Invasion was getting under way, so he thinks it's normal. It's not. His politics are similar to Mexican politics: you go into government to get rich, and then use intimidation to maintain your position and wealth. Nothing Conservative or even moderate about the guy: just a happy face thug, as this article details.
He can use the borderline tactics if he wants. In the end, it will backfire, as is happening all around him: the young people hate him. Only the dead and dying support him.
Oh well. It's the end game for Johnny. At 73, propped up by medical technology and Cindy's money, he's on the last lap. If he runs again at 79, he's got 6 years to learn Spanish so he can promise to rob Peter to pay Pedro. Good luck with that one, but the American kids in Arizona have no use for him.
It's a pyhrric victory. The mask is off, the bared teeth have been seen, and the sickening chaos of Mexico which he cavalierly wants to inflict on Arizona is now grossly obvious to everyone.
Johnny's done. He's just Sarah's problem now, sort of an albatross she has to figure out how to get rid of.
Our government has been stealing from us for years. This needs to stop.
Where is it written that any contribution is forever? Can you not request a refund since he didn’t use it to do what you gave it to him to do? Get elected president?
McCain is a scumbag just like the rest of them. He’s all for campaign finance reform unless it hurts him. It should be against the law for them to keep money left over from a campaign. It should be refunded by percentage.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.