Well, everybody's favorite Bailout Maverick ... just won't go away.
After losing his pathetic bid for the White House, John McCain now plans to fix the Republican Party! It looks like I'll be voting third-party from now on.
John McCain's mission: A GOP makeover
Fresh from a humbling loss in last year’s presidential election, Sen. John McCain is working behind-the-scenes to reshape the Republican Party in his own center-right image.
McCain is recruiting candidates, raising money for them and hitting the campaign trail on their behalf. He’s taken sides in competitive House, Senate and gubernatorial primaries and introduced his preferred candidates to his top donors.
OK, let's stop right here. I meant to bring this up yesterday while discussing Dan Riehl's attack on Glenn Beck, because he said it too. "Center-right" is a European term. We do not live in Europe. Don't fall for this progressive Newspeak crap. Please, speak like Americans.
Now that I've got that out of my system ... Notice the Bailout Maverick wants to move the Republican Party toward a European "centre-right" (hey, that's how they spell it). And don't forget, McCain is the guy who likes to compare himself to the progressive Teddy Roosevelt:
"I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold," McCain told the Times.
Teddy "strong as a bull moose" Roosevelt, was one of the initial "leaders" in America's progressive movement. Roosevelt planned to lead a progressive revolution in American politics, pushing for some of the most radical reforms ever put forth by a major party candidate:
- the graduated income and inheritance taxes
- a living wage, the 8-hour workday
- worker's compensation
- public infrastructure investments
- etc.
Yes, this is what John McCain wants to turn (ah, they're already there) the Republican Party into - The Progressive Democratic Party 2.0.
McCain, it turns out, has emerged as a political godfather of sorts to a number of other candidates aside from Kirk, providing them with unfiltered access to a national fundraising network he has cultivated over a span of two decades.
McCain’s increasingly active role—and his attempts to advance candidates cut from his own ideological mold—isn’t necessarily welcomed in all corners of the party.
“John McCain is a moderate. Birds of a feather fly together,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “It’s not surprising.”
Erick Erickson, founder of the influential conservative blog, RedState, was even sharper in his criticism of McCain’s initiative.
“I’m sure John McCain has a lot of political favors he wants to return in 2010, but I don’t trust his views of who a winning candidate is anymore than I trust his ability to pick a winning campaign staff,” he said. “McCain has never really been a conservative, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s picking non-conservative candidates.”
So there you have it! The Bailout Maverick and the rest of the Establishment, intend to continue moving left.
Funny, isn't it? Considering the only excitement McCain's campaign could drum-up last year, was from Sarah Palin. And she's still more popular than he is. Good thing Grumpy Old Man McCain is the "titular" head of the GOP's makeover.
"It's a potentially interesting mix, I suppose, but it seems to me the animating question among Republicans this season is what to do about government over-reach, especially on the economy." - Matt Welch
UPDATE:
"If the GOP moves leftward -- which is what the phrase 'center-right' means -- it will implode or become irrelevant as an electoral force, because a majority of Americans still want what Phyllis Schlafly described so eloquently in 1964: A Choice, Not an Echo." - R.S. McCain
Just in case you didn't know it before, his snooty just-so story about talk-radio hosts raging in "spittle-flecked furor" ought to tell you what profound contempt David Brook has for conservatives. Here's his walk-off:
The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the G.O.P. But it’s not because the talk jocks have real power. It’s because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time.
Speaking of mythology, Brooks' history of the 2008 primary campaign is spectacularly wrong.
None of this had anything to do with Rush Limbaugh, and had everything to do with the failure of Republican Party leadership. This was why, on Election Night 2008, I wrote "You Did Not Lose," attempting to explain to conservative voters that the defeat of John McCain was not a failure of conservatism. McCain finished with only 47% of the total GOP primary vote, and was never the choice of the party's conservative grassroots core ...
Nov. 4, 2008, was Crazy Cousin John's personal defeat, as well as a decisive repudiation of the Republican Party's leaders, who had utterly abandoned the legacy of Ronald Reagan in favor of the "compassionate conservative" agenda of Bushism, which was nothing but Brooksian "National Greatness" in evangelical drag with a Texas drawl.
[...] Democratic Party failed economic policies of massive bailouts, deficits, and stimulus spending. John McCain’s Mission to Destroy the GOP! – the-classic-liberal.com 10/02/2009 Well, everybody’s favorite Bailout Maverick … just [...]