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Former Massachusetts governor and 2008 presidential candidate Mitt Romney has announced that he will campaign for Senator John McCain (R - Ariz.) next week. According to McCain's campaign website, Romney will join the senator in Mesa, Arizona for a town hall meeting on Friday, June 4th. McCain, a four-term senator, is leading former Scottsdale Congressman J.D. Hayworth in a close race in the Republican primary in Arizona. The primary will be held in August. The announcement may come as a surprise, as during the 2008 presidential race Romney and McCain, both seeking the Republican nomination, appeared to be bitter rivals.

TUCSON, AZ (KGUN - TV) - Arizona Senator John McCain now says soldiers sent to the border should be armed. This revelation comes one day after Senate democrats shot down McCain's border plan to send 6,000 soldiers to the border. At a town hall meeting in Tucson, McCain first told 60 of his supporters in attendance that President Obama's plan to send 1,200 soldiers would not work because the soldiers would only be assigned to "desk jobs." (snip) Nunez asked: "What do you say to the those who accuse you of throwing out numbers, sending 6,000 troops to the border,...

Please help. I plan to keep this thread alive until McCain loses the primary. Let's NAIL THAT RINO! Please help scout for headlines to bring here. I will ping people here once a week with choice headlines and links. [Since it's the OPPOSITE of high volume, several have already signed on.] If you would like to be on this once-a-week ping list, please let me know. Any helpful links will be appreciated. "The most recent online scores from the American Conservative Union are from 2008. In that year, John McCain scored 63 and had a lifetime average of 81.43. ......

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - Senator John McCain tells KGUN 9 News he sympathizes with the illegal immigrant students who put their residents in the United States on the line to show their support for the DREAM Act. The bill would grant students who are under the age of 16 and illegally in the country a path to citizenship if they meet certain requirements. The three undocumented students face deportation after a sit in demonstration inside McCain's Tucson office. The senator later met with the students to hear their side of the story. "Their situation is one that they're in jeopardy. They...

I need a Dramamine to cover Sen. John McCain's reelection bid. With his desperate lurch to the right, he's inducing more motion sickness than a Disneyland teacup. McCain's campaign represents the same self-serving political cynicism that American voters have grown tired of stomaching from the current White House. We need choices, not carbon copies. After decades of embracing the liberal-media moniker "maverick," for his frequent derision of the conservative wing of the Republican party, McCain has now abandoned the label. He told Newsweek magazine earlier this month: "I never considered myself a maverick." But countless YouTube videos show McCain and...

During a discussion of John McCain's drift rightward on Wednesday's Morning Joe, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle smeared the Arizona Senator as more scared of Republican primary challenger J.D. Hayworth than he was of his Vietnamese torturers. Barnicle mocked, "The ultimate sadness is that, here, in the 21st century, running for re-election, he shows more fear of J.D. Hayworth than he showed toward his captors in North Vietnam." [MP3 audio available here] A transcript of the exchange, which aired at 8:05am EDT, follows: JOE SCARBOROUGH: Is he angry and bitter, Mike Barnicle? MIKE BARNICLE: To me, there is a sadness to...

Incumbent John McCain now earns just 47% support to challenger J.D. Hayworth’s 42% in Arizona’s hotly contested Republican Senate Primary race, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely primary voters.

John McCain — who built his political persona and his 2008 presidential campaign around the claim that he’s a “maverick” — told Newsweek recently: “I never considered myself a maverick.” When POLITICO asked McCain about the contradiction at the Capitol this week, the Arizona Republican grew visibly irritated and snapped: “I’ve been called a thousand things. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”He said 48 percent of the homeowners in his state are underwater on their mortgages. He said he’s always “done what’s best for my state and the nation.” Then he said it again, adding, “People can consider me whatever they want.” And...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Republican Senator John McCain, whose "maverick" breaks with his party won him media acclaim and powered his 2008 White House run, now rejects the moniker, according to Newsweek magazine. The Arizona lawmaker, looking to thwart a primary challenge from a conservative Republican former congressman, played down his history of working with Democrats on issues like overhauling US immigration policy, curbing big money influence in politics, or fighting climate change. "I never considered myself a maverick," Newsweek quoted him as saying. "I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities."

Every so often a politician is quoted as saying something so surprising that it can stop you in your tracks. Washington Wire had one of those moments today when we read the latest issue of Newsweek, which quotes Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain distancing himself from his well-established and long-nurtured national persona. “I never considered myself a maverick,” he told Newsweek. “I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.”The statement is stunning on many levels, not least of which because the maverick persona was hammered by the McCain-Palin ticket in the...

Sen. John McCain, who has long been identified in the media as a self-professed "maverick," says in a new interview that he never thought the word applied to him. "I never considered myself a maverick," McCain told Newsweek. "I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities." That's a striking comment in light of the number of times that the former Republican presidential candidate has embraced the term; at a town hall meeting in Michigan in September of 2008, he said, "Sarah [Palin] and I don't agree on every issue -- what...

Late last month, at a dusty fairground outside Tucson, John McCain stood behind the person who is, at least for the next few years, surely his most important legacy to American politics. And speaking to the adoring mob, Sarah Palin stood behind John McCain, repaying his inestimable gift to her in the most compelling possible fashion: by helping him to survive. (snip) Many, many years ago she'd competed in a beauty pageant, Palin declared, as women howled (and a few men growled) approvingly. McCain would surely win the talent and debate portions of any such contest, she went on, but...

"...my deep respect and admiration for the McCains..." "Send the maverick back to the United States Senate!" "He is a man of the people!" http://www.johnmccain.com/live

The conversation ranged widely. Topics included job creation, helping Main Street and not Wall Street, overcoming congressional gridlock and reminding residents that he's still the same maverick politician he has been for nearly 24 years. U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was in Flagstaff Tuesday on the heels of former U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth's announcement to run against McCain in the Republican primary in August. He sat down with the Arizona Daily Sun editorial board before giving remarks at the Coconino County Lincoln Day Dinner at the Radisson Woodlands Hotel. During the 75-minute question-and-answer session, he reiterated that his positions haven't...

The UAE (United Arab Emirates) have bought a thousand American AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missiles. These cost about $160,000 each. The UAE is getting the infrared version, which works well at night or in bad weather. Maverick is a "fire and forget" missile. Once the pilot picks out the target on a TV screen, the missile continues to home in on the designated target without any continued pilot assistance. The 300 kg (660 pound) missile can carry a warhead of up to 138 kg (300 pounds). The UAE will most likely use the Mavericks from their F-16s, which train to attack...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Senator John McCain plans to vote against the nomination of Ben Bernanke to serve another term as chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, a congressional aide said Monday.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is launching perhaps his harshest attack yet on his own party and his gushiest praise of Democrats. "I believe my party has gone astray," McCain said yesterday, singling out GOP stands on environmental issues and racial set-asides. "I think the Democratic Party is a fine party, and I have no problems with it, in their views and their philosophy," he said. "But I also feel the Republican Party can be brought back to the principles I articulated before."

Iraqi parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi is warning that Iran is much closer to attaining nuclear capability than most sources, including the International Atomic Energy Agency and the US State Department, believe. In fact, he predicts the Iranians could have a nuclear capability - and may announce that they have it - as soon as next month. "We are receiving information which says Iran is so close to producing an atom bomb," Alusi said in an interview earlier this month, the latest in a series of interviews conducted since September. "All the international community, they don't realize how close [the Iranians] are...

President Obama made a vigorous effort after the election to court Sen. John McCain, hoping his campaign rival would become a Senate advocate for his ambitious agenda. Instead, McCain (R-Ariz.) has emerged as one of the chief gadflies leading Republican opposition to Obama’s biggest legislative initiatives. Nevertheless, Obama and other Democrats still cling to the hope that McCain can be persuaded to help advance their priorities.

Elections have consequences. Like a stand-up comedian trying to push a catchphrase, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., kept coming back to that statement during an hour-long town hall gathering Tuesday in Marana. Whether it was efforts being made to turn around the economy, President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court or U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi's CIA allegations, McCain told the crowd of more than 200 people at the Marana Municipal Complex that today's America is a direct result of last November's voting. But rather than place all the blame on the ruling Democratic Party, McCain said Republicans were...