BWWWAAAAHHH – so Juan McAmnesty McCain is now running away from the term “Maverick” and according to his girlfriend Miss Lindsey Graham it is all cynical politics. Well I hope that Arizona Republicans remember the contempt that he holds them and their party in. Someone tell me again how exactly that flatlulent old bastard became our standard bearer?
hat tip Weasel Zippers
by Manu Raju and Jonathan Martin
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 then he darted into the Senate chamber without explaining himself further.
But if McCain won’t say why he’s abandoning the “maverick” title now, some of his closest associates will: It’s politics.
“When you’re running for president, you show the public at large that I’ll put the country ahead of the party,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, McCain’s closest friend in the Senate and the Republican who has played the deal-maker role ceded by the Arizonan. “When you’re in a primary, you’ve got to prove to people you’re a good conservative. That’s the difference in the forms. John has a record of conservatism that’s being highlighted now because he’s in a Republican primary. When you’re running for president, you highlight that part of your record, and it shows you’re willing to govern the country as a whole.”
When he ran for president in 2008, McCain needed to distinguish himself from an unpopular Republican incumbent and a deeply tarnished GOP brand, so he picked an outsider as a running mate and described the duo “a team of mavericks.” Now, as he faces a primary challenge from the right, he needs to pivot back and convince conservatives in the Republican base that he’s a GOP loyalist just like they are.
“John’s got a primary,” said Graham, “and he needs to be focused on his election.”
The view that McCain is rejecting the term as part of a political survival instinct is shared privately by some of his former top aides. But few want to discuss the matter on the record for fear of offending a man they still respect — or of hampering his primary campaign against former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.
McCain’s current advisers insist the senator is objecting only to the M-word and not to the concept that he’s a man who puts principle over party.“He’s only talking about the term ‘maverick,’” said Fred Davis, the senator’s adman now and in the 2008 campaign. “He’ll be the first to tell you that he’ll still go against anybody in power, regardless of party, if he thinks what they’re doing is wrong for the country. Some call that a maverick, some that call that being a statesman — there’s lots of terms for it.”
Since losing his presidential bid, McCain hasn’t acted much like a maverick but more like a loyal party man. On big-ticket issues ranging from the stimulus to health care reform, he has been a leading critic of President Barack Obama. And on issues where he once gladly took on his own base, such as immigration reform and climate change, he’s been mum.
But that wasn’t the case after McCain captured the GOP nomination in 2008 and especially after he tapped Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee.
“The original mavericks,” McCain’s campaign team deemed them in one ad.
At rallies, McCain noted with pride that he and his running mate had been called a “team of mavericks.”
And in high-profile settings, McCain gladly embraced the word.“I’ve been called a maverick,’ he said in his nomination acceptance speech.
In outlining his differences with the Bush administration at his first debate with Obama, McCain described his record as an “independent and a maverick of the Senate.”
And he added: “I’m happy to say that I’ve got a partner that’s a good maverick along with me now.”
The paper trail is so extensive and the identity so firmly cemented that Jon Stewart — no McCain ally but on whose show the senator has gladly appeared — didn’t even bother with his usual clips earlier this month.“Now, normally, this is obviously where we toss to a montage of John McCain calling himself a maverick, but I don’t even f—ing need to,” Stewart quipped in response to the Newsweek story.
In distancing himself from the “maverick” brand, McCain is not only attempting to downplay what was the GOP ticket’s central theme in 2008 but trying to excise what made him an American household name and defined him for the past decade.
Since running as an insurgent in 2000 — where his preferred analogy was Luke Skywalker flying out of the Death Star — McCain has portrayed himself as the rare elected official who is not afraid to go his own way for what he thinks is right — party or politics be damned.
And even if he didn’t routinely use the word to describe himself until he plucked Palin from Alaska, he also didn’t steer away from it.
An edition of his 2003 book, “Worth the Fighting For,” was subtitled “The Education of an American Maverick, and the Heroes Who Inspired Him.”
But truth be told, McCain has always donned the maverick mantle as a convenience.
He was a standard-issue Reagan conservative during his years in the House, to which he was elected in 1982, and in his early Senate career. Aside from campaign finance reform, there were few examples of apostasy as he began his 2000 presidential run.
But with George W. Bush winning much of the party’s establishment support, McCain’s best political bet was to play up his penchant for candor and wisecracks as a refreshing alternative to his opponent’s more conventional approach to the campaign. And after he returned to the Senate in 2001, his voting record began to mirror his rhetoric. He gleefully opposed the Bush administration and the conservative base on a variety of issues and even flirted with switching parties.
But in trying to win the GOP nomination in 2008, McCain played up his conservative stances on issues such as spending and the Iraq war and, on the issue of immigration reform, where he had been a key player, said plainly that he had gotten the message from his party’s base.
