Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Sen. John McCain Pines for the Maverick Label


John McCain denied his maverick status during a tough primary campaign against J.D. Hayworth.  It seems that the failed GOP presidential candidate wanted to reassure the conservatives in the Republican Party that he was going to spend more time on his side of the aisle:  a maverick I'm not.

The mantle of "maverick" was being bestowed upon McCain's toadie: Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.  Graham will not face reelection for another four years and can afford to stab his constituents in the back.  Newsweek magazine, a liberal rag, reported the wrath that John McCain laid upon those who would dare take his title:

Yet months earlier, according to Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker piece about the failure of climate-change legislation this year, McCain became "enraged" when a December 2009 article on Time's Web site passed the nickname on to Sen. Lindsay Graham, whom the headline called the NEW GOP MAVERICK IN THE SENATE. Writes Lizza:



Graham told colleagues that McCain had called him and yelled at him, incensed that he was stealing the maverick mantle. “After that Graham story came out, McCain completely stopped talking to me,” Jay Newton-Small, the author of the Time piece, said.

It looks like Arizona was duped again.  McCain is laying low; just waiting until he secures the election and then he is going to bring out that sharp knife and stab you dumb asses in the back again.

With that, McCain’s statement to NEWSWEEK in April 2010 seems even more out of place. While he may have publicly shunned the maverick label, it appears likely that he's merely concealing his independent streak, keeping it under wraps until he can secure another six-year Senate term. At the very least, his jealousy of Graham indicates McCain does, at least on some level, value his maverick reputation. Since it appears McCain will win a fifth term easily, here’s hoping he reassumes the maverick mantle come 2011. The dreadfully deadlocked Senate could use one.

THE MAVERICK RETURNS WITH A VENGEANCE!!

Source:  http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2010/10/04/mccain-to-graham-i-m-not-the-senate-maverick-but-you-can-t-be-one-either.html

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