Wow, McCain is being unceremoniously taken to the woodshed today. I didn't think this thread would reach 1000 posts until the weekend...lol.
Let me pour more gasoline onto the fire. Let me recount when I first realized that McCain was a traitor.
Bill Clinton, while President, nominated a man named Anthony Lake to be the Director of the CIA. I read some pretty bad things about Lake in a number of conservative magazine. Lake had written a great many things, including about his desire to dismantle the United Stated intelligence community. He had strong ties with various Marxist organizations. He was a fox about to be put in the hen house. It did not surprise me that Clinton would nominate such a person to such a sensitive position.
Then, John McCain came out very vocally in SUPPORT of Anthony Lake. He went so far as to have an Op Ed published in the New York Times and he sent a "Dear Colleague" letter to every Senator endorsing Clinton nominee Anthony Lake.
I called McCain's office and talked to a number of staffers and tried to get them information about Lake's unworthiness for a position of so much trust. They were rude and didn't want to address the issue.
Then, McCain came out and introduced Clinton nominee Anthony Lake to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at the start of the confirmation hearings. This was the strongest endorsement you could give a nominee and it was McCain endorsing a leftist Clinton nominee with ties to Marxist organizations who had sworn to destroy the U.S. intelligence community. Who ever heard of a Republican Senator being the one to give such a strong endorsement to a Clinton nominee to anything!? I was livid, but it was too late and McCain had done all the damage that he could.
I wasn't through with the issue yet and I vowed to hand McCain a defeat.
I went to work gathering proof of the charges that Lake had strong ties to various Marxist groups and had made some very radical statements about his intentions in re: the intelligence community. Luckily, my other Senator, Sen. Jon Kyl, was on the committee. I had one of the magazines that had published some of the articles about Lake use their background notes and information, photocopies of documents, etc to put together a rock solid dossier exposing Lake. I had it copied and placed in bright orange envelopes and FedEx'd to every member of the Intel committee. Over the Internet, I worked with several people over the Internet (Usenet) to get on the phones with each of the Republican members of the committee and have them look for and then read the dossier.
My target was Kyl's office and I called a couple of times a day. The hearings weren't going extremely well for Lake, but no one doubted that Lake was going to make it through to confirmation. Then, one day, I called Kyl's office and their whole demeanor changed. They were thrilled I had called and said that they had found the dossier. They said that I would be pleased to know that they had written a new line of questioning along the lines of the information that I'd had sent to them. I asked if Sen. Kyl was going to ask the questions and they said that they could not guarantee it. They said, however, that they were going to float the questions to the Republican members of the committee and that it was probably that someone would pick up on them if Kyl didn't.
A few days later I received a call from a Kyl staffer. He said that I should not believe what I was about to hear in the media. Lake had withdrawn his name from consideration and it was NOT because of his stated need to be with his family (how cliche...) it was because Sen. Shelby, the committee chair, had just subpoenaed some people who could testify to the information in the dossier. According to the staffer, Lake withdrew his nomination because he knew that he was going down if the committee started looking into this. The staffer thanked me profusely. I received a call from the conservative magazine who had helped by putting together the dossier at my request and they were having a "Bon Voyage" party for Anthony Lake. They put me on the speaker phone so that I could celebrate with them.
I handed McCain a defeat and I intend to hand him another one - his own. I've known for years that he was a traitor and I've opposed him ever since. He must be stopped.