Patterico's Pontifications

Good.

Yup. Hate to see it come to this, but…yup.

Patricia (824fa1) — 7/16/2007 @ 7:04 pm

I was a McCain supporter in 2000 with volunteer time and money. Then he spent the next six years shoving his thumb into Republican eyes. The immigration bill finished him although Mark Steyn has a good point too.

Mike K (86bddb) — 7/16/2007 @ 7:36 pm

I agree. For me, McCain-Feingold finished McCain before this campaign even started. The Gang of 14 was the icing on the cake. I couldn’t care less about McCain’s position on immigration because I would never vote for him.

DRJ (31d948) — 7/16/2007 @ 7:49 pm

I’m not sure why McCain thought pissing off his base over and over again was the best strategy for his presidential ambitions.

I really don’t get it.

Maybe his judgment is just bad. And to think, my main concern with him is because of his anger management problems.

Christoph (8741c8) — 7/16/2007 @ 7:59 pm

Toast? That bread’s been grilled, buttered and eaten already. All that’s left are crumbs. McCain, and indeed the toast is all done. It’s all over but the shouting.

I doubt he’ll follow Jim Gilmore in checking out anytime soon, but that’s just a formality at this point.

Psycheout (b63432) — 7/16/2007 @ 8:17 pm

Come to think of it, I don’t even think a makeover could save McCain’s candidacy at this point. Bye, John.

Psycheout (b63432) — 7/16/2007 @ 8:20 pm

Indeed. But as your own righteous fury demonstrated, Patterico, he’s been toast since the passage of McCain-Feingold. The number of Republicans who will never forgive him for that assault on the First Amendment is prohibitively large.

For this, we should all be grateful. Any man who thinks the American people should shut up about their politicians is a man who ought never to occupy the White House.

Paul (91660f) — 7/16/2007 @ 9:03 pm

B-b-b-ut Marianne Means says he is toast because he supports the war! And because he stopped being a maverick, quit sucking up to the media, and quit pushing for limits on political free speech, rights for terrorists, and amnesty!

Don’t you mouth-breathers understand that McCain has angered Republicans by not being sufficently like a Democrat?!

sherlock (b4bbcc) — 7/16/2007 @ 9:19 pm

I have been on-again off-again with McCain since 2000. I voted for him that year in the CA primary (I thought he had the best chance of beating Gore), and regretted it almost immediately afterwards. I too have watched with horror as he has gratuitously bashed the GOP base and adopted his crazy position on campaign finance reform.

Through it all, though, he has remained steadfast on the key matter of choosing to fight the War on Terror. I admire him for not wavering, even though he must have known it would cost him the support of the media elite. I have even come to respect his opinion on interrogations — though I don’t necessarily agree with him — because I know he is sincere and isn’t just using it as a way to bash the Bush Administration. He’s a good man; he just isn’t cut out to be the Republican nominee for President.

JVW (b44a2c) — 7/16/2007 @ 9:44 pm

I suppose it’s worth pointing out, that the post where you declare your undying hatred for John McCain, was after he (and others) skillfully negotiated a compromise that got Roberts and Alito onto the Court, with basically nothing in return for the Democrats.

But yeah, the Immigration and Campaign Finance Reform fiascoes make him somewhat repulsive to the Republican base. I don’t want to vote for him.

Daryl Herbert (4ecd4c) — 7/16/2007 @ 9:51 pm

McCain-Feingold
The Kerry flirtation
The Gang of 14
Immigration bill
Opposition to tax cuts
General all-around “one honest man” attitude (but see “Keating”)

There were some good points, but given the above, who cares?

Kevin Murphy (0b2493) — 7/16/2007 @ 10:04 pm

his corruption hurt a member of my family once. i never forgive that.

assistant devil's advocate (ca2e8d) — 7/16/2007 @ 10:06 pm

Daryl,

Explain how the Gang of 14 had anything to do with Roberts or Alito getting on.

Yeah, they may have had meetings about them. Big whoop. Roberts and Alito were getting on no matter what.

And nothing in return? They have torpedoed a number of nominations.

Patterico (2a65a5) — 7/16/2007 @ 10:08 pm

Any comment on the Republican filibusters in the current Senate?

Andrew J. Lazarus (ae4fe2) — 7/16/2007 @ 10:25 pm

Wake me up when they filibuster a nominee for judicial or executive office. Of course even if they were as unprincipled as you think them, they won’t have an opportunity to do that while GWB is in office; but if the next president is a D, and the Ds still control the senate, and the R minority filibusters someone the president nominated and the majority support, I will readily concede that they’re behaving just as badly as the Ds did in the last term.

Meanwhile, if they’re filibustering legislation, that’s what senators have done for nearly 200 years.

Milhouse (ef8775) — 7/16/2007 @ 10:55 pm

“…but if the next president is a D, and the Ds still control the senate, and the R minority filibusters someone the president nominated and the majority support, I will readily concede that they’re behaving just as badly as the Ds did in the last term.”

The problem with that is simple.

This may have been the convention, but isn’t now.

If the Democrats dishonorably filibuster our court nominees, but we don’t filibuster theirs out of loyalty to a past code of conduct all sides used to respect, but only one now does, then this will invariably, inevitably, shift the dispositions of courts in one direction more than the natural will of the people would suggest.

This is unfair to the voters that put Republicans in office to get things done.

It would be better if the Democrats respected the traditions of the senate… but if they don’t and are in fact giving fait accompli new traditions… not to respond toughly is a way to further tilt the institutions of the U.S.A. in a disastrous way.

Christoph (8741c8) — 7/16/2007 @ 11:01 pm

I wouldn’t count McCain out just yet.

With six months to go to the first primary, he could still “surge.”

What is it about his campaign finance law that seems to upset some people?

Never did understand.

alphie (015011) — 7/16/2007 @ 11:26 pm

I agree with you about not counting McCain out. One assumes Fred won’t self-destruct.

I don’t assume that.

I don’t think Romney can win the nomination because of his religion and people’s reactions to it.

That leaves Guiliani. He or Fred are definitely the front runners, but I won’t discount McCain yet.

Christoph (8741c8) — 7/16/2007 @ 11:34 pm

Wasn’t Fred a supporter of McCain-Feingold?

Yeah, I think he was.

Psycheout (b63432) — 7/17/2007 @ 12:07 am

Sorry, I forgot the money quote:

“If McCain-Feingold passes, it will not have happened if it weren’t for Fred Thompson,” said McCain’s chief of staff, Mark Salter, on Wednesday evening.

Will McCain Feingold affect Law and Order reruns? Hmmm.

Psycheout (b63432) — 7/17/2007 @ 12:13 am

McCain lost me with South Carolina 2000. What Bush did during that primary was despicable and he deserved to get his ass handed to him. John McCain had every right to read the man the right act, and he wimped out.

A Reagon, a Clinton would’ve wiped the floor with George W. Bush. Hell, Lyndon Bainse Johnson would’ve had him for lunch, and had room for desert. John McCain? No balls. Simply no balls. No intestinal fortitude what so ever. He survived captivity during the Vietnam War physically, but it broke soemthing inside him, and in South Carolina in the Summer of the year 2000 the Bush campaign called him on his bluff. Since those events we’ve known that John McCain is a hollow man, and times are ton perilous to allow hollow men in the white house.

Alan Kellogg (2a9e8f) — 7/17/2007 @ 12:39 am

McCain is toast, his campaign is in a death spiral. Most of us understood that he just wasn’t the same McCain as in 2000. There was McCain Feingold and even if you can ignore several other “Maverick” moments afterwards he still has to deal with the McCain Kennedy ShAmnesty bill. It really is a shame because he just gave one of the best speeches for the war in Iraq ever. Unfortunately, we can’t afford to nominate another Presidential candidate that is right on the WOT and wrong on things domestically. Bye John, please leave gracefully.

Buzzy (9d4680) — 7/17/2007 @ 4:16 am

Hey, Milhouse, time to wake up. (Besides the filibustering, I also call your attention to Orrin Hatch’s most curious variations in the Blue Slip rule, same link.)

Andrew J. Lazarus (013498) — 7/17/2007 @ 6:12 am

alphie, people get upset when you infringe on their freedom of speech. You know, that whole “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” thing.

Fred Thompsen has realized that the BCRA (aka McCain-Feingold) was a mistake. McCain hasn’t, doesn’t look like he ever will.

LarryD (feb78b) — 7/17/2007 @ 6:13 am

Larry,

Congress passed it, Bush signed it and the Supreme Court upheld it.

Surely, it can’t be the whole bill you guys dislike.

Is there one section in particular that you have a problem with?

alphie (015011) — 7/17/2007 @ 10:52 am

Andrew, if the Republicans wanted to block Paez’s nomination they didn’t need to filibuster – they were the majority, and indeed they held it up for four years without a filibuster. Filibusters are by definition a tactic a minority uses to hold up the majority. The attempt to filibuster Paez’s nomination was not made by “the Republicans”; it was made by 14 Republican senators, out of, what was it then, 54? How is an act by fewer than 1/3 of the GOP caucus something that the Republicans did?

As for the blue slip rules, the majority can make whatever rules it likes. That’s not a filibuster, it’s the exact opposite of a filibuster. The rule you’re referring to was a rule of one committee about what matters it would consider; committees have the right to set their own agendas, and they can be as arbitrary as they like about what they will consider and what they won’t. It’s not a matter of morality or precedent, it’s what the current committee finds most convenient.

In any case, there was no precedent, before the Bush administration, for filibustering nominations. Your attempt to cite one has failed. Going back to sleep now.

Milhouse (ef8775) — 7/17/2007 @ 11:19 am

Alphie, yes, it is the whole bill we object to. It’s a blatant violation of the first amendment. Yes, to their eternal shame “Congress passed it, Bush signed it and the Supreme Court upheld it”. And we protested the entire way. Why do you find that hard to believe?

Thompson did vote for it, and I do hold that against him, but he didn’t sponsor it, and he’s since somewhat backed away from it. So far he’s said only that it didn’t work out the way he thought it would; that’s a start, but it’s not the admission I’d like to hear from him. I’d like him to say that he knew at the time that it was wrong, or at least that he understands now that it was wrong in principle, not just in how it worked out. And I’d like him to commit to vetoing any similar bill that he might be presented with as president. But if he doesn’t say any of that he’ll still be a far better choice than McCain, and I’ll probably still support him.

Milhouse (ef8775) — 7/17/2007 @ 11:23 am

Christoph (#4), I think part of McCain’s problem is he started thinking that the press was his base, or was representative of his base. Which is to say that he got incredibly out of touch.

I spotted that problem with him back in the 2000 campaign, I wondered “has he forgotten which party he’s trying to get the nomination of?”.

LarryD (feb78b) — 7/17/2007 @ 11:56 am

But it’s mostly about money and records, milhouse, not “freedom.”

It banned candidates soliciting or receiving donations in their offices.

Do you think they should be able to do that again?

alphie (015011) — 7/17/2007 @ 11:57 am

Congress passed it, Bush signed it and the Supreme Court upheld it.

Except for when they didn’t, right alphie?

As for McCain, I’m watching him debate Reed-Levin right now, and he’s absolutely right on the money. It’s frustrating that a guy can be so right on some things and so wrong on others. I want to like him, but there’s no way he’s Presidential material.

Pablo (99243e) — 7/17/2007 @ 12:00 pm

Every once in a while the hypocrisy of the Bushbots reaches truly nauseating levels.

According to Milhouse, the filibuster against Richard Paez wasn’t really a filibuster because the Republicans were in the majority, and the filibuster was conducted by only a fairly subset of the Republicans, albeit including then-Majority Leader Frist. Except this filibuster against a Clinton Surgeon General nominee succeeded with 43 (of 54) Republicans and no Democrats opposing cloture. The Paez filibuster probably lost many Republican votes once it became clear there were too many defectors to sustain it.

By Milhouse’s absurd definition, the fabled filibusters against the Civil Rights Acts weren’t really filibusters, because the Democrats were the majority party and the filibustering was by a subset of Democrats (those from the South).

Has anyone ever said before Milhouse found it necessary in defense of his beloved GOP that a filibuster was a tactic only of the minority party, and not that it was a tactic of the minority on a particular issue?

Nobody thought filibustering nominations was unconstitutional until the scorched-earth Republicans concocted it as another way to increase power in the (Republican) executive. Milhouse readily concedes that, with the Blue Slip rule, manipulation for the benefit of his beloved syndicate trumps any attempt at philosophical coherence or consistency. It was the same with filibusters.

Try not to choke on your own vomit while you sleep.

Andrew J. Lazarus (7d46f9) — 7/17/2007 @ 12:00 pm

#11 – KM
I think you nailed it. The Gang of 14 was my breaking point after BCRA pushed me up to the edge. Yes, we got two SCOTUS appointments, but lost the guarantee of a floor-vote on appellate nominees – the Dems gave us a couple names, and blocked the rest for all time.

Alphie, why we hate BCRA is the free-speech limitation that specifically protects incumbents just prior to an election from being named in oppostion ads. The Robed-Wonders who approved that should be impeached, and punished by being the permanent counsel for Gitmo detainees, with residence in Cuba (in the same cell-block as their clients would be a bonus).

Another Drew (8018ee) — 7/17/2007 @ 7:44 pm

Drew,

Are you sure?

I read over the law:

http://tinyurl.com/37ygzd

All I could find was a rule that says candidates must appear in their ads with the “I approved this ad” message if they attack their opponents in the ad in the last 45 days of a campaign.

And that’s only if they want to qualify for the lowest ad rates.

alphie (015011) — 7/17/2007 @ 9:27 pm

Alphie, you are of course confused about McCain-Feingold. Just last month, the Supreme Court struck down BCRA ad limits in the case of FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life.

Robin Roberts (6c18fd) — 7/18/2007 @ 7:24 pm

7/16/2007

McCain: Toast

34 Responses to “McCain: Toast”

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