Posted on 02/12/2008 9:34:17 PM PST by bshomoic
McCain 'Fired Up' to Face Democrats
By LIBBY QUAID – 1 hour ago
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Republican John McCain said he was "fired up and ready to go" against either Democratic presidential contender as he celebrated primary victories Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
"We do not yet know for certain who will have the honor of being the Democratic Party's nominee for president," McCain said of Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. "But we know where either of their candidates will lead this country, and we dare not let them."
He told supporters at a hotel in Alexandria, Va.: "My friends, I promise you, I am fired up and ready to go."
McCain seemed to aim much of his rhetoric at Obama and his message of hope and optimism. The knock against the 46-year-old Obama is his lack of experience; he is serving his first term as an Illinois senator.
"Hope, my friends, hope is a powerful thing," said McCain, who at 71 is a four-term senator from Arizona.
McCain cautioned: "To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope. It's a platitude."
Recalling his struggle as a Vietnam prisoner of war, McCain said he discovered then "that nothing is more liberating in life to fight for a cause that encompasses you, but is not defined by your existence alone."
"I do not seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need," said McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam after his plane was shot down..
"I seek the presidency with the humility of a man who cannot forget that my country saved me," he said.
As the prohibitive leader in the race for Republican convention delegates, McCain is all but assured of the GOP nomination, even though former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee hasn't made it easy with his stubborn insistence on remaining in the race.
Huckabee embarrassed McCain on Saturday by winning contests in Kansas and Louisiana and coming close enough in Washington state to challenge the results.
Even so, McCain was generous, praising Huckabee as a gifted communicator and advocate who is a credit to the Republican Party.
"He certainly keeps things interesting, a little too interesting at times tonight, I must confess," McCain said. "But I have even more reason to appreciate just how formidable a campaigner he is."
Huckabee sounded more combative, arguing that he made a strong showing among rural voters in a region where McCain has lived since winning election to the House in 1982.
"I've never lived a day in that region; he spent the last 25 years there," Huckabee said in Little Rock, Ark.
McCain had big trouble with Huckabee's base of support in Virginia; there, 63 percent of white, born-again Christians supported Huckabee, according to exit polls. Among conservatives, a group that includes the born-again Christian vote, Huckabee was supported by 51 percent, while McCain had a 2-to-1 lead among moderate voters.
In a twist, McCain showed unexpected weakness among independents in Virginia, where they were about evenly divided between Huckabee and McCain. However, McCain carried independents in Maryland, according to the exit poll for The Associated Press and the television networks.
“My friends”
Kill me please. I don’t know if I can handle hearing that from his mouth for the next nine months or worse four years.
God help us, it is going to be a massacre of epic proportions if that the match up this November
Gotta hand it to the media. They have threaded the McCain needle with precision and brought election tampering to a new low.
When you subtract the Democrat crossovers from that 33% I think that the total will be much less than 33% mare like at the most 20%.
I wish my name was Libby Quaid.
You will seriously vote for the most liberal senator in the United States? Mr. babies-who-survive-abortions-are-not-persons Obama?
You have issues.
I suppose I do. I suppose we all do.
I suppose we all vent in different ways.
Senator McCain’s Liberal Record
• Amnesty = McCain / Kennedy (D)>p< • Censorship = McCain / Feingold (D)
• Gas Tax Increase = McCain / Lieberman (D)
• McCain’s Proposed Democrat Ticket = Kerry / McCain (D)
• Turncoats Who Asked to Switch Parties: McCain / Jeffords (D)
• McCain’s American Conservative Union Rank= 47th / 100 = RINO
• New York Times (D) Endorsed: McCain
• Opposed Bush Tax Cuts = McCain + (All Ds)
• McCain wants to keep the Death Tax
• McCain wants to raise Social Security Taxes
• McCain / ACLU (D) is Pro-Terrorist Rights
• McCain/Kennedy(D)/Edwards(D) Tobacco=Trial Lawyers Dream Act
Why oppose Democrats when you can have a real liberal.
McCain is about as exciting as Bob Dole after his Viagra ran out.
He then changed his Depends and took a nap.
“...Bin Laden may put out a new tape.”
You honestly think a Bin Laden tape will be enough to scare people into voting for McCain? No. It will take a full scale attack on our soil for that to happen, and the terrorist leaders pay attention to our politics. They won’t attack before November.
Besides, if Republicans have to hope for a terrorist attack to get McCain in, the party is in deep trouble.
>p< = dyslexia
IMO, neither R candidate can beat Obama, who, I’ve said all along, I believe will be the Dem nominee.
The R’s quest to throw out conservatism in order to ‘beat Hillary’ will be both the party’s and our country’s undoing.
your MyMcCain site (ConservNotVoting.johnmccain.com) is still pending approval by MyMcCain staff.
Thought we needed a laugh:-)
LOL!!
“Bush was right on the War on Terror, the Supreme Court and taxes.”
In your mind and in my mind Bush is superior to Democrats. But we do not decide elections, and the mushy middle voters who do decide elections do not want a third Bush term. Bush only won a second term by 60,000 votes in Ohio, and that was while the war was still relatively popular and the economy was going strong. Outside of the far right, the war is not popular. It is especially unpopular with women, who are the majority of the electorate. I know conservative women, usually reliable Republican voters, who are voting Dem in November because they want the war over. THAT is the mood of the electorate. Add a weakening economy and the Republicans would have hard time taking this election with a strong candidate. And we do not have a strong candidate.
Get ready for the fairness doctrine, hate speech laws and more destruction of the family. Get ready for double digit unemployment, inflation, interest rates, gas lines and rationing, and then get ready to offer people a better message and better conservative solutions than we have offered them this time.
Dole always sounded like he was on the senate floor discussing the next pork barrel law. McCain sounds the same way. What is with this ‘my friends’ crap he keeps saying???
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