GOP Senators Reassess Views About McCain

by Paul Kane - February 4, 2008 - Washington Post

McCain's relationship with House Republicans has been strained for years. After stumping for more than 50 GOP candidates during the 2000 campaign, McCain dramatically scaled back his efforts in 2002 out of pique toward House Republicans who opposed his effort to overhaul campaign finance law. In 2004, while McCain was objecting to GOP-backed tax cuts, then-Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) suggested that the senator, a former prisoner of war, should go to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to see what "sacrifice" meant to the nation.

This is classic John McCain. He never misses an opportunity to remind people of his personal physical sacrifice. He is a hero. However heroes don't (or shouldn't) get a free ride for every personal whim for the rest of their lives. John McCain thinks he should. If you oppose amnesty John McCain thinks you are an "obnoxious racist bigot". If you don't think your freedom of speech should be curtailed you are a "corrupt special interest". If you oppose judges finding a right to abortion in the Constitution you are a "radical religious extremist".

John McCain is now pretending that these gross insults to the majority of the American people were not truly meant to insult us. He needs our votes. Whether Hucakabee could have won if he had not snarled at the party that he deserved the nomination because the religious right had not been treated with respect. (What was Bush's victory?) Or whether Romney could win if the "anybody but McCain coalition" had started a little earlier. (The same enthusiastic supporters of the religious Huckabee show no Chrisian charity where any Mormon is concerned.) The reality is that if McCain gets the nomination, the Republican Party is going to have trouble ever reaching unity.

This is definitely going to be a year of the "lesser of two evils". Welcome to the 21st century where America has two parties. The socialist Democrat Party. And the socialist light Republican Party. Anyone who believes in freedom doesn't have much chance except to choose the lesser option. Frederick Hayek must be turning over in his grave.