Every day is "I hate McCain day" but did you know that today is "Great Selections from Free Ride day?" Lets call it Uriah Heep meets Dick Nixon. Yes indeedy heh heh:
"Hardly a mention of McCain goes by without Matthews blurting out the word "maverick"...And what was it that Matthews was praising so highly? McCain's praise of George W. Bush. "the fate of the world may hang in the balance and we shoudl all of us keep our personal ambitions a distant second to standing with the president of the United States, our commander in chief," proclaimed McCain at the convention. Facing a straw poll he knew he was likely to lose to Tennessean Bill Frist (the convention was held in Memphis) McCain came up with a brillant solution. "Straw polls are entertaining, my friends, even extremely early ones, but I think we have bigger things to worry about. So if any friends are thinking about voting for me, please don't. Just write in President Bush's name," said McCain. His statement not only made it possible to dismsiss his eventual loss in the straw poll, it demonstrated to Republican activists his fealty to Bush--two birds killed with one deftly tossed stone.
But without irony, Matthews pointed to McCain's tribute to Bush as a case study of the maverick in action...a year later [chuck todd, political director of NBC news] once again found McCain's willingness to support the presdient (and agree with nearly all his Republican colleagues) to be the essence of maverickness. "It would be easy for him to criticize the war...the maverick thing to do is actually to take the unpopular stand."' Witness the logic at work: When McCain challenges Bush, it is proof that he is a maverick. When he cozies up to Bush, it is also proof of the same."
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