{"id":8040,"date":"2006-07-26T15:21:40","date_gmt":"2006-07-26T19:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8040.html"},"modified":"2006-07-26T15:21:40","modified_gmt":"2006-07-26T19:21:40","slug":"lets-drop-the-maverick-nonsense-shall-we","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/lets-drop-the-maverick-nonsense-shall-we\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s drop the ‘maverick’ nonsense, shall we?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know there are still a few Dems out there who like [tag]John McCain[\/tag]. They see him on [tag]The Daily Show[\/tag], they find him charming, and they hear the far-right complain bitterly about him, and these Dems are left thinking, “McCain isn’t like his [tag]GOP[\/tag] colleagues.”<\/p>\n

In case it wasn’t abundantly clear before, it’s well past time for any stragglers to disavow these ideas once and for all. Consider the last 48 hours.<\/p>\n

First, McCain sat down with Jon Stewart<\/a> on Monday, defended a “stay the course” approach in Iraq, and praised [tag]Bush[\/tag] for acknowledging previous mistakes over the course of the war — acknowledgements that appear to exist only in McCain’s imagination.<\/p>\n

Second, M[tag]cCain[\/tag] announced his opposition<\/a> to legislation that would allow Congress to sue Bush over “signing statements.” Asked for an explanation, McCain said, “I think the [tag]president[\/tag] will enforce the law.” (There was no indication McCain was kidding.)<\/p>\n

And third, McCain criticized congressional Democrats<\/a> being right about Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. It’s clearly the worst of the three.
\n<\/p>\n

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has repeatedly refused to condemn Hezbollah for its role in initiating the Lebanon-Israel conflict. Yesterday, in a press conference with President Bush, he “criticized the ‘damage and destruction’ caused by Israeli attacks but said nothing on Hezbollah’s role.” Other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt, have condemned Hezbollah for its role in initiating the conflict.<\/p>\n

Sen. John McCain appeared on Fox this morning and falsely claimed that Maliki has “condemned Hezbollah.” McCain said that, as a result, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and others who have criticized Malaki for his position on Hezbollah are “not qualified to lead.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s one thing to get the story wrong about al-Maliki. Maybe McCain assumed he had condemned Hezbollah, and didn’t realize that he hadn’t. He should know what he’s talking about before addressing the subject on national television, but hey, mistakes happen.<\/p>\n

But McCain felt it necessary to add that Dems’ criticisms of al-Maliki on this issue suggest to him that “[tag]Democrats[\/tag] are proving again why they’re not qualified to lead.”<\/p>\n

And these are just from the last couple of days. In case there was ever any doubt, it’s time to give up on McCain. His drive to be president has overtaken his sense of decency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know there are still a few Dems out there who like [tag]John McCain[\/tag]. They see him on [tag]The Daily Show[\/tag], they find him charming, and they hear the far-right complain bitterly about him, and these Dems are left thinking, “McCain isn’t like his [tag]GOP[\/tag] colleagues.” In case it wasn’t abundantly clear before, it’s well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8040\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}