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Fresh from a humbling loss in last year’s presidential election, Sen. John McCain is working behind-the-scenes to reshape the Republican Party in his own center-right image. McCain is recruiting candidates, raising money for them and hitting the campaign trail on their behalf. He’s taken sides in competitive House, Senate and gubernatorial primaries and introduced his preferred candidates to his top donors. When the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy created a vacant Senate seat in Massachusetts, McCain went so far as to solicit former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling to run for the seat. It’s all part of an approach...

Fresh from a humbling loss in last year’s presidential election, Sen. John McCain is working behind-the-scenes to reshape the Republican Party in his own center-right image. McCain is recruiting candidates, raising money for them and hitting the campaign trail on their behalf. He’s taken sides in competitive House, Senate and gubernatorial primaries and introduced his preferred candidates to his top donors. When the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy created a vacant Senate seat in Massachusetts, McCain went so far as to solicit former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling to run for the seat. It’s all part of an approach...

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney had already sent out invitations for his Phoenix fund-raiser, offering supporters the chance to meet him in a Chase Field luxury box over a $300-per-person lunch or a $3,000 VIP reception. But when former rival John McCain called with an offer to be listed as host for the event in his hometown, Romney happily went back to the printer for a new invitation with McCain’s name emblazoned on it. Yesterday, McCain’s gesture helped Romney’s political action committee raise about $80,000. It also consummated an 18-month rapprochement between two competitors who battled for the 2008 GOP presidential...

WASHINGTON (AP) - While ceding some ground to President Obama on high-profile weapons cuts, lawmakers are cutting money for training and spare parts to pay for other weapons Obama doesn't want and their own pet projects. The push-and-pull is playing out within a massive, $626 billion funding bill for the Pentagon that is being debated on the Senate floor. All told, the bill denies Obama about $4 billion he sought for operations and maintenance accounts while providing $2.5 billion for C-17 cargo jets and $2.7 billion worth of pet projects sought by lawmakers.

(snip) STEPHANOPOULOS: So you fully expect there will be prisoners in Guantanamo after the deadline? MCCAIN: All I know is, frankly, what I briefed on, and apparently they’re certainly not going to make that deadline. But we should continue to work towards the closure of Guantanamo Bay because of the image that it has in the world of brutality and harms our image very badly.(snip) STEPHANOPOULOS: But it’s going to take more than a decade to succeed, isn’t it? MCCAIN: I think you will see signs of success in a year to 18 months, if we implement the strategy right...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Sen. John McCain is co-hosting a fundraiser for his former 2008 Republican primary rival Mitt Romney next Wednesday in Phoenix. . . . . . The fundraiser will benefit Romney's Free and Strong America PAC...

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Link only, per FR copyright and excerpt rules

Saying she was "alarmed about the direction our nation is headed," former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton officially launched her bid today as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. Surrounded by hundreds of supporters in a ballroom at the Marriott Tech Center, Norton, who has been serving as the executive director of the Denver Police Foundation, said she wanted to stop what she saw as an out-of-control government in the nation's capital. "At every turn, Washington's giant hand seems to be grabbing everything in sight," said Norton, who served as lieutenant governor under former Gov. Bill Owens. "Seizing control of...

CHARLESTON (AP) – Republican U.S. Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham said Monday that President Barack Obama should act quickly to send additional troops to Afghanistan for the war against the Taliban. McCain, of Arizona, told reporters after a town hall meeting on health care at the military college The Citadel that the president knows what's needed and he should make the decision immediately. "Then we'll work with him to sell it to the American people who are understandably weary of the conflict," McCain said.

The First Amendment, as rewritten under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, except if it is funded by a corporation, unless it is a media corporation, or if the speech occurs just prior to an election, unless it is in the form of a book, which, even though the law covers books, too, the Federal Election Commission would never apply that law to books because we say so, though we said something entirely different a couple of months ago." In an apoplexy of righteous indignation over...

As climate change reemerges as an issue in the national policy debate, it may help define the legislative legacies of two men who once vied for the White House: Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.). Both men have championed the issue of global warming for years, including when they served as their party's presidential nominees in 2004 and 2008, respectively. But, for the moment, McCain is barely engaged in the issue beyond criticizing the climate bill passed by the House, while Kerry has emerged as one of the chamber's leading dealmakers. The fact that the two no...

Back in October of 2008, an article was written in the Orlando Sentinel where it was stated that Senator McCain called for an investigation into ACORN... John McCain took aother jab at the left-wing community organizing group ACORN today at a rally in Wisconsin, referencing various complaints that the group has signed up the same would-be voters multiple times in states like Ohio. "There are serious allegations of voter fraud in the battleground states across America. They must be investigated," he said to cheers. Will Senator McCain do the right thing and lead the charge in requesting that every Conyers,...

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and his close ally Sen. John McCain will appear in Charleston at 9 a.m. Monday for a Town Hall meeting at The Citadel. The meeting is open to the public, and both Republican senators will take questions about health care and other topics.

(snip) SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Well, I thought the president is eloquent. I thought he had a lot of passion. (snip) MCCAIN: I hope he gets a bill. I hope we can sit down together and do the things that all of us agree on. And there are a number of things that are -- that we can agree on. And I think the American people, obviously, want that. I don't know what the administration and the Democrats will insist on. Facts are stubborn things. The bills so far have had no bipartisanship associated with it. They were drawn...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Democratic leaders are calling on Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) to apologize for heckling President Obama as a liar. Wilson shouted to the president "you lie" after Obama said illegal immigrants would not benefit from health insurance coverage from the reform bill. Obama glared disgustedly in the direction the remark came from, as did Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Vice President Joe Biden. House Democratic Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) called Wilson's outburst "embarrassing," while McCain said it was "totally disrespectful" and that there was "no place for it in that setting or any other." McCain said...

(snip) McCain also spoke about the raft of national spending bills over the past year, including the $787 billion financial bailout of 2008, $700 billion for the stimulus plan and the $83 billion rescue of the auto industry. Taken with other measures, the spending would saddle the country with as much as $9 trillion of debt future generations would have to pay, the senator said. "What I'm wary about is that we're committing an act of generational theft," McCain said.(snip) He advocated for reforms of Medicare, saying the system likely would go broke within seven years if Congress and the...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) late Tuesday told reporters on his first day back in the Senate that the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) last month will affect him and the Senate deeply. The 2008 GOP presidential hopeful, who attended Kennedy's funeral in Boston on his Aug. 29 birthday, "I miss him every day," McCain said."We had a very, very congenial and enjoyable relationship. He had a great sense of humor. Obviously there's no one else like him."

(snip) Listening to Sen. McCain's elegy, however, I found myself increasingly bothered. "We disagreed on most issues," McCain said at one point, "but I admired his passion for his convictions ... ." Really? Kennedy was the farthest-left liberal during nearly five decades in the U.S. Senate. McCain, just one year ago, campaigned for president, proclaiming his conservative convictions. And without doubt, Kennedy's wholehearted support of Barack Obama helped to torpedo McCain's campaign. Perhaps one moment disturbed me most: "When we worked together on the immigration issue," McCain recalled, "we had a daily morning meeting with other interested senators. He and...

Sen. John McCain blasted Democrats' plans for a health-care overhaul Friday in Oro Valley at the annual conference of the League of Arizona Cities and Towns. In a generally jovial mood at the Hilton El Conquistador Golf and Tennis Resort, before an adoring crowd that gave him two standing ovations, he joked: "Every place I go, everybody says, 'I voted for ya,' 'I voted for ya.' I'm about to demand a recount." . . . . . On whether he would vote for health-care reform if the public option were removed:"It would have to depend on the legislation. There are...