The Love Affair Has Cooled Down -- For Now

I was never a John McCain fan, and nothing he’s done recently has changed my mind.  Sort of.

The lamestream media, on the other hand, loved McCain the Maverick.  They would tell us – and who knows, maybe they actually believed it – that they liked him because he was independent, a profile in courage, a rare politician who did what he thought was right.

These are the same people who slobbered over Barack Obama then looked us in the eye and said they were objective journalists.  So as we used to say in the old neighborhood, let’s cut the crap. What they really loved about McCain is that he wasn’t reliably conservative; that he seemed to enjoy sticking his thumb in the eye of fellow Republicans; and most of all, they loved him because in 2000 he ran against George W. Bush.  If  independence is what they admire in a politician, then they’d love Joe Lieberman.  But they detest him.

And now, sad news has arrived from the political front.  The love affair between the lamestreams and the maverick has cooled down.  You see, McCain is running in the Arizona Republican primary later this year against a real conservative, former congressman J.D. Hayworth – and being a “maverick” isn’t such a good thing as far as a lot of conservative Arizona Republicans are concerned.

As Newsweek put it, “Many of the GOP's most faithful, the kind who vote in primaries despite 115-degree heat, tired long ago of McCain the Maverick, the man who had crossed the aisle to work with Democrats on issues like immigration reform, global warming, and restricting campaign contributions.”

When he was running against W, McCain and his team couldn’t tell us enough about what a maverick he was.  Now he tells Newsweek, “I never considered myself a maverick.”  I don't know, maybe it's me, but I expected a little more backbone from a guy who took everything the North Vietnamese had to give.

Yes, politicians have been known to conveniently change their minds from time to time. But selling your soul for votes is no mere flip-flop.  So when he heard that the maverick said he was no longer a maverick, Jon Stewart, the fake journalist, said, “Now, normally, this is obviously where we toss to a montage of John McCain calling himself a maverick, but I don’t even f---ing need to.”  And that was just for openers.  “You always felt like he maintained a controlling interest in his soul,” Stewart said, but now it’s like “printing your soul on Zimbabwe dollars.”

And then Politico joined the fun and ran a piece that said:  “Truth be told, McCain has always donned the maverick mantle as a convenience. …

“He was a standard-issue Reagan conservative during his years in the House, to which he was elected in 1982, and in his early Senate career. Aside from campaign finance reform, there were few examples of apostasy as he began his 2000 presidential run.

“But with George W. Bush winning much of the party’s establishment support, McCain’s best political bet was to play up his penchant for candor and wisecracks as a refreshing alternative to his opponent’s more conventional approach to the campaign. And after he returned to the Senate in 2001, his voting record began to mirror his rhetoric. He gleefully opposed the Bush administration and the conservative base on a variety of issues and even flirted with switching parties.”

And on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, a panel of liberal journalists – (forgive the redundancy) -- were bemoaning the fact that John McCain, a guy they once admired (for running against the hated George Bush), had sold out and had become become so pathetic.  What they mean by that, of course, is that John McCain is no longer sticking it to conservatives – not while he’s running against one in the primary anyway.

I admit, I like the current conservative incarnation of John McCain.  But I know what's coming. Someday he'll take a trip in the time machine and go back to the future.  Someday he’ll be the old-new John McCain who will stick that thumb in conservative Republican eyes and laugh that self-satsified laugh.  That’s when he will once again be a “maverick” to journalists of the lamestream media.  And then, the they will love him again.