Leaving McCain

Senator John McCain was one of the very few living heroes I had in politics. I loved the fact that he was right more often than not, and didn't mind pissing off his own party over the things he believed in. Republicans increasingly seem to think that the United States operates under a parliamentary system that requires rigid party discipline. In a party overflowing with unrepentant pigs like Mitch McConnell and Richard Shelby, John McCain stood out.

The McCain who beat George W. Bush by 19 points in New Hampshire was a thing to see. He was brave enough and smart enough to call Bush's ruinous tax cuts what they were. When Iraq went to hell, McCain stood up and demanded the firing of Donald Rumsfeld and a troop surge.

Of course, that McCain died almost as soon as he started running for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. He made amends with the likes of Jerry Falwell, whom he once called an "agent of intolerance." He embraced Bush's insane view of economics and foreign policy, just as both were completely repudiated by the American people. McCain won the nomination, but he sold his soul to get it.

For decades political orthodoxy has demanded that a Republican runs to the right in the primaries, then edges to the center for the general election. McCain was prevented from engaging in this time-tested strategy by people like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, who wondered aloud if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama weren't preferable to their own party's nominee. In not standing up to them, John McCain displayed a shockingly uncharacteristic lack of courage, both political and moral.

As much as I'd like to blame Limbaugh, Coulter and Hannity for the Obama presidency, I can't. John McCain was the only Republican who could have defeated Obama in the political circumstances of 2008 and everyone knew that. And he threw it all away to placate a motley collection of failed deejays and genetically wrong hack columnists.

In the end, McCain lost because he deserved to lose. Anyone who goes to the lengths he did to appease the most rigidly dumb elements of his constituency - the elements that always hated him and always will - has no business being anywhere near the White House. Anyone who would put someone as dangerously ignorant as Sarah Pailn within reach of the presidency is himself unworthy of it.

I had hoped that defeat taught him to let McCain be McCain, which had served him so well prior to '08. Instead, he continued the perplexing political journey he began with his disastrous presidential campaign, this time out of fear of a primary challenge back in Arizona. That challenge has finally come from a known loser like J.D Hayworth.

Then there was this week's debate over the repeal of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
This is what McCain said in the fall of 2006.




Well, the day that the military leadership - including Colin Powell, who McCain specifically cited - went to McCain and said that the policy should be repealed finally came on Tuesday.

Gays in the military is yet another example of Americans looking for something ridiculous to get upset about. Perhaps in 1993 you could make an argument about things like "unit cohesion" being impacted by the presence of open homos, but you can't now. Israel, along with the majority of the NATO armies in Afghanistan - including Canada's, - allow gays to openly serve. Not only is unit cohesion not effected, neither is the ability of American troops to work with them.

The policy is a joke, which has cost the U.S military dozens of Arabic and Farsi translators, who are sort of important to a War on Terror, and were already in dangerously short supply. America finally has to decide whether it would prefer beating the Takfiris to appeasing a collection of superstitious Christians over something as trivial as butt sex.

Here is the Tuesday exchange between McCain and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen.





That's not military necessity, as the examples of Israel, Canada and most of the European NATO allies amply demonstrate, that's domestic politics generally, and McCain's fear of J.D Hayworth specifically.

My disenchantment with John McCain isn't specific to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which is, in the end, a moronic debate. It's about leadership and courage, two tests that McCain is failing at an alarming rate.

When he was running for president, McCain was more afraid of talk show hosts and columnists than he was of a truly gifted campaigner, with predictable results. Now he's so afraid of a Hayworth, a Jack Abramoff crony who got his ass kicked in a state that elected Janet Napolitano twice, that he's willing to abandon everything he ever stood for. That the Rush Limbaughs of the world think that someone like Hayworth can win statewide after getting destroyed in his Congressional district tells you everything you need to know about their political acumen.

But if John McCain is willing to become a bloated, stupid bastard like Hayworth to appease Hayworth's Tea Party cult, which will never work, there's no reason at all that McCain should be renominated. Hayworth may as well be the sacrificial lamb of the Republican Party in November. There is absolutely no reason to support McCain if McCain insists on being an older and balder version of Hayworth.

If Hayworth becomes the nominee this year, the Arizona Senate race become the campaign to watch if you're interested in seeing how 2012 is going to go. If a Tea Party asshole like Hayworth loses in a state like Arizona, Barack Obama becomes unstoppable for re-election. McCain, as the presidential nominee, only won his own state by eight points, which tells me that Arizona is going purple and that Hayworth will be annihilated. If Hayworth runs a campaign based on "a profound disagreement with Senator John McCain over the concept of amnesty, whether he wants to call it comprehensive immigration reform or a pathway for guest workers to remain," Hispanics will turn out in force and ruin the dumb bastard forever.

But that means absolutely nothing if McCain insists on abandoning everything he ever stood for just to become J.D Hayworth. If Hayworth wins, you get J.D Hayworth. If McCain wins, you still get J.D Hayworth.

And that leaves me with little other choice but to endorse Hayworth in the primary and whatever Democrat runs in the general election.

I just can't pretend to support John McCain's cowardice anymore. The Limbaughs, Coulters and Hannitys of the world are going to get what they want: a long-term Democratic majority. They'll profit mightily for it as America suffers.