{"id":9642,"date":"2007-01-17T09:46:37","date_gmt":"2007-01-17T14:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9642.html"},"modified":"2007-01-17T09:46:37","modified_gmt":"2007-01-17T14:46:37","slug":"mccain-takes-up-residence-in-pander-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mccain-takes-up-residence-in-pander-town\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain takes up residence in pander-town"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Following up on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9625.html\">an item<\/a> from Monday, James Dobson, head of the Focus on the Family empire, indicated that he wouldn&#8217;t vote for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008 &#8220;under any circumstances.&#8221; Dobson added that he prayed &#8220;we won&#8217;t get stuck with him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>How did McCain, whose desperation has caused him to reach out to some pretty unsavory characters, respond? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/POLITICS\/blogs\/politicalticker\/2007\/01\/mccain-says-he-hopes-to-make-amends.html\">Shamelessly<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Sen. John McCain said Tuesday he hopes to patch things up with conservative Christian leader James Dobson, who recently said he wouldn&#8217;t support the Republican&#8217;s presidential bid under any circumstances. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m obviously disappointed and I&#8217;d like to continue and have a dialogue with Dr. Dobson and other members of the community,&#8221; McCain said Tuesday during a stop in Columbia. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m happy to say that I&#8217;ve established a dialogue with a number of other leaders,&#8221; including the Rev. Jerry Falwell, &#8220;Purpose Driven Life&#8221; author Rick Warren and Dr. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s worth remembering that McCain, just six years ago, insisted that religious right leaders were &#8220;agents of intolerance&#8221; to whom Republicans shouldn&#8217;t &#8220;pander.&#8221; Indeed, he argued publicly that he&#8217;d like to see them out of the GOP altogether. Shortly thereafter, McCain said he &#8220;must not and will not retract&#8221; his remarks, noting that they were &#8220;carefully crafted&#8221; and &#8220;carefully thought out.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Since then, the religious right movement has grown less tolerant and more callous, while McCain has grown less principled and more pathetic. Worst of all, it won&#8217;t work &#8212; Dobson may be unhinged, but he knows a charlatan when he sees one. McCain is selling his soul in exchange for nothing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following up on an item from Monday, James Dobson, head of the Focus on the Family empire, indicated that he wouldn&#8217;t vote for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008 &#8220;under any circumstances.&#8221; Dobson added that he prayed &#8220;we won&#8217;t get stuck with him.&#8221; How did McCain, whose desperation has caused him to reach out to [&hellip;]<\/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-9642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9642","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=9642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}