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Backroom deals have marred the debate over health care reform and poisoned the public’s attitude toward the legislation, Sen. John McCain said Sunday. “Overwhelmingly, the American people are saying stop and start over,” McCain (R-Ariz.) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “They don’t like these cynical deals.” (snip) McCain said he hoped last week’s health care summit at the Blair House could be “the basis for some good negotiations...” (snip) “Let’s start over,” McCain said, citing malpractice reform and allowing insurers to sell across state lines as reforms Republicans could support. “We want to sit down and have negotiations. We...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced the members of the Senate Republican delegation to Thursday's White House health-care summit, and the list includes Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). The Arizona Republican is not known as a health-care expert. But as the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, McCain offered a sweeping reform plan with some elements that overlap with the Obama proposal, and others that would have represented a radical departure from the current system.

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. ......

When we conceived the RINO FREE AMERICA PROJECT ON FREE REPUBLIC, we envisioned Conservative activism that would send RINOs packing and replacing them with true Conservatives worthy of our support. NOW we need your help to defeat the biggest RINO of all. Many of us here on Free Republic have been cheering JD Hayworth on because John McCain is possibly the worst, (and most powerful,) RINO serving in the Senate today and he simply MUST be defeated lest he betray us again as he has so many times throughout his less than stellar tenure. While "the force" might be...

U.S. Sen. John McCain has picked up the endorsement of former actor and Sen. Fred Thompson while opponent J.D. Hayworth gets ready for an event with Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and State Sen. Russell Pearce. Hayworth and McCain, seeking a fifth term, are battling in the Republican Senate primary this year. Thompson — a former senator from Tennessee and actor on the “Law & Order” television show — announced his endorsement Wednesday. McCain and Thompson both ran for president in 2008. “I’m for John McCain. I hope he gets re-elected. I’ll help him get re-elected if I can. It’s...

Link only, per FR posting rules

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...

Hayworth's support of Bush's big-government polices included voting for the No Child Left Behind Act; the paperwork- and red-tape-friendly (and business-unfriendly) Sarbanes-Oxley Act; the pork-laden 2005 highway bill that included the infamous "bridge to nowhere"; and, most expensive of all, a Medicare drug benefit that created more than $7 trillion in unfunded liabilities. What is more, his support for a monstrosity known as the 527 Reform Act, which was intended to close "loopholes" in McCain/Feingold, and which was arguably worse for conservatives than the original article.

(snip) 10 Questions for U.S. Senator John McCain 1. What’s on your iPod? iPhone - Frank Sinatra, Linda Ronstadt, The Beatles, Roy Orbison, ABBA 2. What’s the best gift you ever got? Freedom from prison in Hanoi. 3. What do you consider your greatest success?Managing to crash four Navy airplanes.4. Did you ever have a nickname? If so, what was it and what did it mean. Yes, “The Mac.” It originated in New Hampshire when I won the primary there and people chanted “Mac is Back.” 5. What is your favorite movie of all time? Viva Zapata 6. If you...

During her speech to the first ever National Tea Party Convention in Nashville on Saturday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin discouraged the very idea of a national organization, urging the movement to stay leaderless and decentralized. This was the most important and valuable part of Palin’s speech. As for the rest of it–Sarah sounded pretty much like the same old Republican Party. Despite the many independents that make up the movement, the tea parties in large part represent a long overdue reexamination of conservative principles. A big-spending Democratic president seems to have awakened grassroots conservatives enough to finally lament the...

PHOENIX, ARIZONA. FEBRUARY 14, 2010. President’s Day will be the day an almost-President will formally feel a hard charge from his right. Conservative former Congressman and talk radio host J.D. Hayworth will announce his campaign for the U.S. Senate, a seat now held by the 24-year incumbent John McCain, at Hayworth's new campaign headquarters in Phoenix. Republican stalwarts, Team Party patriots and a few surprises will be on hand. The Hayworth campaign will also launch a “Money Bomb” on Monday too. Details about this online fundraising effort can be found at www.JDforSenate.com, which formally debuts with Hayworth’s announcement.

Faced with his toughest re-election battle ever, John McCain has moved to the right on several hot-button issues, like gays in the military and climate change, and has built a campaign war chest of more than $5 million. Defeated just two years ago as the Republican presidential candidate and with his bonafides as a true conservative again being challenged, John McCain finds himself in a struggle to get even his party's nomination for another term in the Senate. Many conservatives and Tea Party activists are lining up behind Republican challenger and former talk radio host J.D. Hayworth, reflecting a rising...

WASHINGTON—Democrats rolled out their response Thursday to last month's Supreme Court ruling that threw out restrictions on corporate and union political spending, proposing new disclosure requirements and limits on spending by foreign companies. The proposal, drafted by Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) in consultation with the White House, also includes a ban on election expenditures by companies that have taken government bailout funds or received federal contracts. The court's ruling freed corporations and unions to spend as they wish on political advertisements, while leaving intact existing restrictions on direct contributions to candidates' campaign...

Sen. John McCain once led the global warming debate on Capitol Hill, pledging to force repeated floor votes on cap-and-trade legislation until it passed. "Over time we will not be elected Miss Congeniality in the Senate, but we will win," the Arizona Republican said in April 2006. But McCain has gone on hiatus from the issue since losing the presidential election to Barack Obama. And he is likely to keep his distance even more over the next six months due to a primary challenge from a conservative former congressman that threatens to end his Senate career after four terms. "The...

Maricopa Co. Sheriff Joe Arpaio is urging GOPers to shelve Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in favor of ex-Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R), a challenger attacking from the right, in a new letter sent to primary voters. "Senator McCain has served this country admirably but it's time to replace his moderate or even liberal positions on taxes, the border, social causes and big bank bailouts with a consistent conservative like J.D.," Arpaio writes in the letter. ""I just wish Senator McCain had run as hard against Barack Obama as he is against a conservative like J.D. That could have prevented the harmful,...

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(CNN) - The newest member of the Senate will soon hit the 2010 campaign trail for Arizona Sen. John McCain. A McCain source confirms Sen. Scott Brown, R-Massachusetts, will campaign with the 2008 Republican presidential nominee in early March. McCain is facing a primary challenge from former Rep. J.D. Hayworth. (snip) Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin will also hit the campaign trail for McCain at the end of March.

<p>If Tea Party activists are unhappy with President Barack Obama, it would have been a lot worse under President John McCain, Tom Tancredo declared Thursday in opening remarks at the convention in Nashville, Tenn.</p> <p>“Thank God John McCain lost the election,” the former GOP congressman from Colorado and 2008 presidential candidate said to cheers and applause from the 600 grassroots activists in attendance.</p>

Three years ago, Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) was pretty clear about his stand on the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. A former war hero, McCain said he would support ending the ban once the military's top brass told him they were okay with it. "The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, 'Senator, we ought to change the policy,' then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to," McCain told an audience of college students during the "Hardball"...

I don't claim to be clairvoyant....... a political prognosticator..... But I am going to make a prediction today about U.S. Senate race being held in Arizona .... U.S. Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, is going to get beat. One of the false assumptions many Republicans hold following the special election for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts ...., is that this is simply a bad year for Democrats. It will be a bad year for Democrats running for re-election in the House and Senate, but it's not just because they are Democrats. It's because they are incumbents...