The Straight Talk Express is announcing their intention to run for President. Again:
You never get a second chance to make a first impression unless you’re in politics. In this elongated campaign season, there are third and fourth chances, opportunities to “re-set” a campaign slow to get off the starting block.
This brings us to Sen. John McCain who today officially announces his presidential campaign — not to be confused with the announcement he made on “The Late Show with David Letterman” in March or his “Straight Talk Express” tour two weeks later.
In search of traction for his flagging campaign, McCain has delivered a series of speeches this month intended to showcase his serious credentials — a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who made himself a military and defense expert over 25 years in Congress.
New rule: You are only allowed to announce you are running for President twice every election season. If the voters are uninterested, take the hint.
Tsulagi
Desperation much from Stroller McCain? It’s gotta suck to know the fate of your candidacy depends upon the Great Decider’s competence in Iraq. I’d have some sympathy for him if I didn’t find it so funny.
Myrtle Parker
Just watched McCain’s recent visit with Stewart of the Daily Show. To all of Stewart’s barbs McCain offers the familiar lie that, “No one has been more critical of the way this war has been conducted than me!!”
John McCain is the single most despicable politician in the country right now.
John McCain is more despicable than Dick Cheney.
McCain is worse than George W. Bush.
Karl Rove could learn a thing or two about rank dishonesty from one John F’ing McCain.
This guy acts like we don’t have ears to hear or memory to remember his outright disgraceful cheerleading through the full breadth and scope of this god forsaken WAR!
It was MCCAIN who was George W. Bush’s biggest cheerleader at the Republican Convention. McCain is the one who equated Kerry’s swiftboating with Bush’s AWOL guard service. McCain who has literally sold out his entire persona and integrity to the cause of getting himself elected.
There is no bigger hypocrite. No one more worthy of scorn and embarrassment. No one who should be held up to more ridicule and public humiliation than this man.
John McCain by your unforgivable cheerleading and warmongering and hypocrisy and caving to torture you have earned your place atop the list of the very worst politicians in these United States. Congratulations.
I can’t believe I once voted for you. That is to my eternal shame.
Bubblegum Tate
John McCain To Send Self Back To Vietnamese POW Camp To Revitalize Campaign
Jackmormon
They’re not listening to us, Mr. Cole. They know on some level that they’re running around acting like idiots, but they don’t know how to get off the moving train and are afraid to be the first person to try.
Redleg
New rule: if you’re a reprehensible lying sack of shit, you can’t refer to your political campaign as “The Straight Talk Express.”
Cyrus
What did people think of McCain before McCain-Feingold, hugging Bush, and ongoing warmongering? I ask this is a 24-year-old who has always been left of center, so I was paying very little attention to the Republican primaries when I was 17. So, sure, I obviously have a general idea, but I’d like to get a more detailed or definitive picture. It’s always seemed to me like the 2000 version of McCain would have been exactly what the sensible Republicans like Cole would have wanted. Military service, pretty right-wing on policy but talked about bipartisan cooperation and it actually did seem like he had little time for theocrats on most issues… if you agree with his voting record, why not?
Is my perception that he was a “sensible Republican” before the 2000 election just spin? Is it true, and he’s so disliked now because of the betrayal? Was he always the political shill we see now, and it just wasn’t apparent until after the election?
grumpy realist
I always felt that the “support” for McCain’s campaign this time around was more due to The Love Of The MSM rather any support by Independents.
If I were to make on general assumption of the leanings of Independents vs. (Democrats and Republicans), I would say Independents put more importance in consistency and adherence to whatever set of principles identified by the voter as being “important”. (That’s why they’re Independent–they vote according to their own axioms, not whatever happens to be identified as “Republican” or “Democrat”.)
Taking this as the lens through which to analyse McCain’s behavior, one can see he’s been floundering all over the place. His swings to the right and genufluctions to the Religious Right that he trashed so bitterly only a few years earlier doesn’t look like the following of any moral principle at all–it looks like “pander to the religious nuts” and “I’ll say anything to get elected.” This is always a dangerous reputation to get; for the Independent audience McCain was drawing his strength from, this is deathly.
Add to that McCain’s continued support of the war and continued tub-thumping for putting more money, more soldiers, and more equipment into what looks to be a Lost Cause to more and more americans. I’m wondering how many self-identified Independents are entrepreneurs and business men. Any successful entrepreneur or business man knows there’s a point at which you have to declare “this doesn’t work” and stop pouring money and energy into a company in a death spiral (the “when to hold ’em and when to fold them” mantra.) McCain, by his present actions, seems to indicate a total inability to judge When To Get Out.
Add to the top of this the fact that the bimbo goldfish known as the MSM are finally getting bored with McCain and are looking around for new challengers and I think you’re going to see continued fizzle of McCain’s support.
cleek
i thought he was the “sensible” one, too. right up until he started the cunnilingus on Bush. then it was like a fog lifted, and instead of the great honorable maverick McCain, there was just a sad little old man, confused and pathetic.
my wife’s just now starting to see him for what he is, since she doesn’t pay all that much attention to politics.
tBone
It’s either this, or senile dementia. Possibly both.
I would have voted for McCain in a heartbeat back in 2000. Now, typing that makes me throw up a little in my mouth.
Andrew
Well, after hearing McCain tell Stewart that he would like to plant an IED under his desk and kick a dog, I can’t wait for the man to have his finger on the nuclear trigger.
Mr Furious
If McCain had any balls, he’d go back and announce in the Baghdad market.
Unescorted.
Rome Again
McCain – Mc (son of) Cain (evil) – son of evil.
Wow, how’d you know?
Pb
Up is down, black is white, and…
Here’s John McCain, self-proclaimed biggest war critic:
And here’s John McCain, before?
Err, yeah, how’s that going, again?
Up is down, black is white, John McCain is the biggest Iraq critic out there, George W. Bush deserves our admiration for Iraq, and Bill Clinton was the one who made us “pay a very heavy price in American blood and treasure” in Kosovo. Gotcha.
And of course:
McCain is so critical of how this war has been mismanaged that he… doesn’t even want to look into it, but would rather support and admire the President! Bravo, sir!
Myrtle Parker
That about sums it up for me too and I suspect many, many, many others.
jg
Maybe he fogot that he already announced. He is 73 you know.
Myrtle Parker
McCain was the final proof for me that you really can’t trust any politician.
Or perhaps you can, but you really, really shouldn’t…
When McCain says he has been the biggest critic of this war, well, that just takes the cake for me. I can’t think of anything he could say that would just gobsmack me like that. This is like Rove saying he’s been a Democrat all along. It is like Cheney describing himself as more liberal than Wellstone. George W. Bush declaring himself the biggest anti-war activist that ever lived. Laura Bush proclaiming that no one has suffered as much as she and georgie boy have… oh wait.
Jake
Can’t we just ban political whores from running?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
At least President McCain wouldn’t get a blowjob in the Oval Office. At his age, that would probably kill him.
I think the main issue facing the voters in November 2008 is, which candidate is likeliest to restore integrity to the White House by not having sex in it? McCain and Brownback are the only two candidates I trust on this issue, frankly. That’s why they should run on the same ticket when one of them wins the nomination. They’ll win in a landslide, and the American people can be assured of a G-rated Oval Office for the next 4-8 years.
Sirkowski
New Rule: You can’t run for President if you are suffering from PTSD.
Zifnab
McCain is the so-called exception that proves the rule. Republicans are scum. It’s clear that “Straight Talk” was an act. The saddest thing of all is that McCain’s “Straight Talk” bullshit got him so much press and so much admiration, but because he couldn’t see how to use the people rallying behind him to win an election he tossed it all over the side for Bush’s big-dollar donors. The man almost literally sold his soul to corporate interests, and we got to see every minute of it on national TV.
HyperIon
as far as being the media’s darling, i heard that his popularity among reporters on the 2000 campaign trail had something to do with the quantity and quality of the alcohol available on the McCain bus.
Tom Hilton
I think the strategy is to keep announcing his candidacy until the voters give up and say “okay, okay, I’ll vote for you, I’ll do anything, if you just stop announcing your candidacy!”
And by the way, I thought McCain was kind of a tool back in 2000. I suppose I could be mildly embarrassed not to have considered him a completely worthless tool back then, but at least I have never considered voting for him.
Paul Wartenberg
It’s perfectly okay for John McCain to announce more than once that he’s running for President. *I* keep announcing and everyone ignores me the same way we’re ignoring him…!
Tom Hilton
Not true. What about Pete McCloskey?
Oh, wait…he just switched his registration. Never mind.
p.lukasiak
Do you really want the choice to be between Dennis Kucinich and Duncan Hunter?
p.lukasiak
it isn’t “uninterested”, its that they are uninspired. In most of the country today, the words “proud Republican” is an oxymoron thanks to Bush.
Does anyone know of any Democrats for McCain websites yet? i’d really like to help him get the nomination…
DougJ
This is off topic, but tomorrow’s David Broder column will say that Harry Reid is as bad Alberto Gonzales.
He’s jumped the shark. Maybe Fred Hiatt will cut off his life support before he causes his family any more embarrassment.
J. King
John McCain’s not on the Straight Talk Express. He’s on the Crazy Old Man Raving Express.
And DougJ, I’m pretty sure Fred Hiatt, an unabashed neocon, is just fine with David Broder saying that Harry Reid is as bad as Alberto Gonzales. Come to think of it, though, David Broder can be John McCain’s seatmate on the Crazy Old Man Raving Express.
Undeniable Liberal
Hey, everybody knows that Rudy DA MAN!!
Zombie Santa Claus
According to Bill Frist, if his eyes can track the balloon on video, he’s okey-dokey. I don’t think America can afford a second Terri Schiavo scandal right about now.
tBone
In related news, Broder’s nightstand finally collapsed under the strain of all the Republican money that’s been left on it over the years.
Actually, I retract that. Prostitutes do good honest work compared to Broder.
Zifnab
I should remind you that Kucinich used his ’04 bid for President to look for girlfriends. They’re still whores even if they charge less.
Dug Jay
It’s always a bit refreshing to see how clever all the fools and morons are that have made this site their second home, their first being the local sanatorium for the insane. You guys are truly deranged.
mrmobi
Yes, and unlike you, faux Doug J, we all manage to hold down jobs which support our families.
Now, go back to planning world domination, and pull up your underwear.
mrmobi
Yes, and unlike you, faux Doug J, we all manage to hold down jobs which support our families.
Now, go back to planning world domination, and pull up your underwear.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Yes, yes, yes. We don’t like you either. Fuck you too, asshole. Now go away.