He is just an innocent victim of the media, bloggers, and the conservative establishment:
Brooks is a conservative who admires McCain, so I suppose even this level of criticism is sort of admirable. Still, the passive-voice construction of the entire column really grates. Bloggers are somehow responsible for McCain running juvenile ads comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears? A bored press is responsible for McCain claiming that Obama puts personal interest ahead of country? The conservative establishment prevented McCain from calling out Jerome Corsi’s book for the vile trash that it is? The system forced McCain to hire one of Karl Rove’s disciples as his campaign manager?
Enough. Just enough. There are plenty of ways of getting attention, and McCain made his own choices. No one forced them on him, not the system, not bloggers, not the press. If McCain is running a campaign based on personal destruction, he’s doing it because that’s the choice he made. Less passive voice, please.
And don’t you dare wonder why we should vote to give this guy control of the country when he can’t even control the direction of his campaign.
Why? Shut up, that is why! Don’t question his patriotism! You know he was a POW, dontcha!
The Other Steve
Mark Halperin is on Minnesota Public Radio! Right now, you can listen on the internet.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/programs/midday/
He’s being funny, claiming he’s unbiased. :-)
jake
Meanwhile Obama is responsible for the lyrics of songs written by people who support him.
Dennis - SGMM
Yes, but McCain will win in Iraq and pursue bin Laden to the gates of hell – as long as no one tells him not to .
BombIranForChrist
What we all need to remember is that McCain suffered for Murka and because of his sacrifice, we must support him, even if we destroy the country in the process.
Why? Because McCain gave his life for Murka. He gave his arms. His legs. His manhood. He gave all of this for Murka.
He died for us. He died for our sins. And then he was re-born on the third day to lead us in our national struggle against Islamo-russo-fasco-communism. He did this for you. He did this for me. He did this for Murka, you little jerks.
I am a patriot of Murka. Are you?
Martin
Personal responsibility is for people that make less than $5M per year. McCain is just a victim of society.
Incertus
Does that mean we can blame the trainwreck that “An American Carol” is sure to be on John McCain?
Ugh
Hah, just noticed the new category, nice one.
strawmanmunny
Yes, but every Republican knows, that the tribal areas of Pakistan are beyond the Gates of Hell.
If America elects John McCain, we will reap what we sow. If eight years of this crap doesn’t wake enough people up, I guess it’s just going to take 12.
Bush = Coolidge
McCain = Hoover
For those that forget their history, they are doomed to repeat it.
liberal
Martin wrote,
And for Democrats and liberals. Never for Rethuglicans.
cleek
for he be so honorable and blessed with the mark of the maverick, St. John Sidney The Innocent of BBQ III can not be assigned responsibility for what his employees do in his name. they do ill out of overzealous love for the man, not because he wishes their misbehavior. let us not dismiss the man, the maverick, the Pensioner Of War; that the rest of us were half as decent, the world would find itself with a surplus of honor.
wasabi gasp
There’s nothing sexier in a man than desperately abandoning your principles. tsss…HOT!
bago
dontcha! … dontcha what?
Dennis - SGMM
So if “media, bloggers, and the conservative establishment” made McCain turn against his own stated principles a tricky mofo like Putin should have no problem making him blow a dead pig on network television.
sy
Brooks is a republican apologist prick that stands just to the left of Kristol Meth. By a millimeter.
srv
OK, I have the new meme:
John McCain For POWTUS
Please distribute through the fluffersphere.
Matthew
Those damn kids refused to get off his lawn, bum rushed his door, took his campaign hostage, and are running the kind of nefarious campaign that John McCain would vomit in anger at if he weren’t under the control of ruffian youths. You can’t blame him for that, can you liberals? THEY’VE GOT HIS FAMILY!!
John McCain isn’t responsible for anything he says or does and if you take offense to anything he says or does he has an explanation for why what he said and did isn’t what he said or did.
thesebastards.blogspot.com
Xenos
McCain seems to be taunting Obama at every step of the way. His campaign is spending millions on commercials during the Democratic campaign… He would flip out if Obama did the same. At a certain point, when the desperation and bad faith get obvious, McCain will have set himself up for a hell of a fall.
The worse thing that could happen to McCain would be to be turned into a joke. He seems determined to do half that job himself.
Tsulagi
And don’t forget, he rode in a jet fighter and was shot down. Undeniable qualifications to lead the country. Questioning that brilliant analysis firmly establishes you as a Nazi appeaser. Or inartful to some.
Joshua Norton
Yes but, he got the GI bill passed. You know, the one he voted against. Just ask Fox Noise.
I smell smoke. I think someone’s pants are on fire.
Adam
Yes but, he got the GI bill passed. You know, the one he voted against. Just ask Fox Noise.
He didn’t vote against it, he opposed it, offered a competing bill, and skipped out on the vote. Totally different.
Dennis - SGMM
You’ve got him all wrong. McCain is so impressed by the sacrifices of our military people that he voted to enable them to keep sacrificing. He was doing them a favor.
Tsulagi
Or if he’s not too busy getting off on ABBA…
Really didn’t need to know he pumps himself to ABBA before a speech. Straight and non-fucked-up Republican continues to be a vanishing demographic.
Vote John McCain! Put a Dancing Queen in the White House!
Punchy
Here’s the sad thing: Elect McCane, and we stay in conflict forever, lose God-knows how many privacy rights, and malfeasance is everywhere.
In effect, with McCane as Prez, we all become POWs…in our own country.
cleek
my friends, the chance that we may someday not be at war remains the greatest threat to our country. my opponent would have you think that peace is possible, desirable even. but he’s an America-hating pussy. and that’s not change i can believe in. god bless America, except for my opponent who hates God and wants to outlaw His teachings and burn His books – God should strike him right down.
Brachiator
Gosh. It seems like only yesterday that David Broder was claiming that McCain was forced to go negative because Obama had refused to go to Iraq with McCain and his personal prick, Joe Lieberman, and refused all those joint appearances at town hall meetings.
In the early days of the primary, Hillary Clinton loved to suggest that she and McCain had much in common. Who would have guessed that they shared an almost limitless capacity to whine, point the finger at others, and a stunning incompetence when it came to running a competent, issues-driven campaign?
McCain and Hillary seem to believe that their personal histories were an adequate substitute for judgement and ability. But McCain is not ready to lead from Day One. McCain was hungry to get his party’s nomination for the presidency, but now that he has finally realized this ambition, his pettiness and lack of qualification for the office of the presidency is coming to the fore. Ironic, ain’t it?
Dennis - SGMM
When McCain declared “We’re all Georgians now,” he didn’t know how right he was. We, too, have a broken military, a floundering economy, a bellicose and incompetent government and we’re at the mercy of those with oil and cash. If McCain is elected, by 2010 he’ll be declaring that “We’re all Burmese now – and on our way to being Ethiopians.”
Kerry Reid
Not that it will ever happen, but I would love for someone to run an anti-McCain ad that echoes George C. Scott in Patton: “No dumb bastard ever won a war by being shot down for his country. He won it by shooting the other poor dumb bastard down for HIS country.”
But then, I’m one of these commie pinko liberal types who, upon hearing someone bleat “Support the Troops!,” automatically responds with “Support them so that they can do WHAT, exactly?” You know, when trillions of money is being flushed down the crapper on a war of choice, I’d kinda like to see what the end goal actually is.
So, who wants to go in with me to hire a vaguely Asian-looking person to wear vaguely VC black pajamas and show up at every McCain campaign stop until he has that PTSD meltdown that we all know is just waiting to come out? (And I truly mean no disrespect to soldiers and anyone else who does suffer from PTSD. But I find it unconscionable that someone who has lived through the horrors of war continues to talk about it as if it’s a grand game of Risk, rather than a bloody, filthy, often-pointless misadventure that represents the failure of diplomacy.)
jake
Like this fellow?
The Other Steve
We’re all Paris Hilton, now.
dbrown
Obama has got to attack and attack and attack – he needs to stop being Kerry with a little bit of a backbone but more attack dog – when McLie tells his story about the GI bill, Obama needs to talk about all the injuried troops that gave their blood for the U S of A and McCain sold them out. This is the truth and the only way the stupid folks that live in the backward areas of the US (any where away from the East or West coasts) will ever wake up and smell the shit bushwhack/McSame has been feeding them is by Obama hitting hard day in and day out using the truth and hard facts with an in-your-face attitude.
liberal
dbrown wrote,
Damn straight.
geezer
Seems to me McCain is always being “compelled” to do things against his will.
That sounds like a very weak-willed man.
Paul L.
Small problem for progressives that believe the McCain plagiarized the cross in the dirt story from Solzhenitsyn.
Solzhenitsyn Biographer: Cross-In-Dirt Gulag Story Never Happened
flyerhawk
Reporter: Senator McCain, on July 21st you admonished Barack Obama for his comments that he would be willing to attack Pakistan to get high value targets. Your quote was “[T]here’s a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do, and I’m afraid that it’s a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border. And I would not announce that I’m going to attack Pakistan, as Senator Obama did when he was during his campaign.”.
During your interview with Pastor Rick Warren you said “IF I’M PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, MY FRIENDS, IF I HAVE TO FOLLOW HIM TO THE GATES OF HELL, I WILL GET OSAMA BIN LADEN AND BRING HIM TO JUSTICE. “
Senator McCain, do you believe your own statements or do you believe that Pakistan is a greater challenge than the gates of hell?
Senator McCain: Uhhhh. What? Could you repeat the question? Uh I have to go.
Gus
What the fuck difference does it make where he got the story? Besides, it’s not like the librul press is going to call him on it, nor will any Democrat. Mustn’t appear mean-spirited. That shit is only okay if you’re a Republican.
John Cole
Question: Why does Paul L. think this website is a den of progressivism?
Possible Answers:
A.) He is a moron
B.) Momma didn’t love him
C.) Anything to the left of Rush Limbaugh looks the same to him
D.) All of the above.
Seriously, it is funny enough when someone calls me liberal, let alone progressive, but the commenters here? Most of them are centrists, with a smattering of token lefties here and there. The only thing many of us even have in common is we hate Bush and the current GOP. Hell, half the “lefties” here are voting for Obama as their second or third choice, and are holding their nose while they do it.
In other words, Paul L., this is not a hotbed of progressivism, you moron.
cleek
what he actually believes is irrelevant: he’s trolling.
Rick Massimo
Poor John McCain is a mere victim of the system that has made him a senator for 26 years and a major party’s candidate for president. The poor man is powerless. And that’s why we need to elect him president.
aehriunlhhhgbg
Sorry; I had a quick stroke there. I’m all better and ready to vote for McCain now.
The Other Steve
Interesting
Delia
Oh trollity troll: And this is a problem why? The freepers first discovered the link in 2005. Chuck Colson has been pushing the myth that the cross in the dirt story is in Solzhenitsyn since forever. So it’s been out there in the ether waiting to be scooped up as a Faith Promoting Experience by whoever wanted to have one. That’s all that’s necessary. Motive. Means. Opportunity.
John Cole
For more fun for Paul L.- what do the following people all have in common:
Andrew Sullivan
Pat Buchanan
Jonah Goldberg
Daniel Larison
Erick Erickson
George Bush
Hugh Hewitt
Answer: They all self-identify as conservative.
Grapple with that one for a while. See you in a month when you are ready to fart out another trolling comment.
The Other Steve
You must be new here.
The Other Steve
TPM is an obvious den of progressvism, and therefore cannot be trusted.
wasabi gasp
Hotpocket of cheeseandmeatinim?
Zifnab
I feel like I’m getting screwed, but I don’t see the camera.
Brother Flaming Taser of Warm Reason
Honestly I hate the term progressive. I’m a fucking Liberal and happy to be one. This “progressive” rebranding bullshit annoys me to no end.
jake
Fixxled.
srv
Ah, so he got it from Jesse Helms, who got it from Chuck Colson.
Thanks for clearing that up!
Brother Flaming Taser of Warm Reason
You mean you can feel it after all those pain-killers?
Mary
Awwww! I can haz presidency?
Paul L.
Answer: The commmenters and Tim F.
That and you link to and tend to agree with (from the blogroll):
Crooked Timber, Crooks and Liars, Ezra Klein, Oliver Willis
Pandagon, Sadly, No!, Talk Left, The Carpetbagger Report,
Glenn Greenwald, Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias and Talking Points Memo
However you are missing some.
AMERICAblog Eschaton, Firedoglake, Liberal Oasis, MyDD, Open Left, RawStory, Think Progress and Juan Cole
I can say I am a
classicLiberal does that make it true?Liberal Masochist
I love when idiots like Paul L. provide a link that does little or nothing to further the point they are attempting to make. Makes you wonder…
Brachiator
Nice try. Of course, it’s not a matter of what “progressives believe.” It’s a matter of what the facts are.
It’s becoming clear that McCain has learned a lesson from Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign, that is, if you are going to bend the truth with a personal anecdote, make it harder to debunk it.
Whether the source of the Christmas story was Solzhenitsyn, Chuck Colson or O. Henry, it is unlikely that the tidy tale told by the Straight Talker actually happened. But his defense, of course, is not evidence, but the challenge that a former POW would never lie.
Similarly, during the church forum, McCain retold this famous story:
Even though this incident was widely reported, its truth was never actually confirmed. As blogger Jonathan Turley noted:
The attack occurred on February 1, but it wasn’t until February 20 that news agencies could get at something closer to the truth (U.S.: Bombers didn’t have Down syndrome), but either way, McCain is counting on a lazy or compliant press not to bother to dig up the inonvenient truth behind this little tale.
As an aside, Pastor Rick Warren engaged in a little verbal flim flam himself during the forum.
Whatever, 80% of Americans might believe, there is no evidence to support the claim that faith-based organizations are uniformly more successful than government programs. This assertion is little more than a re-statement of the conservative belief that private charities are always superior to government social service programs.
OriGuy
We haven’t been selling arms to Hell. As far as I know.
Dennis - SGMM
That makes two people to whom it never happened.
flyerhawk
You think the Pakistanis are going to fight back against us?
4tehlulz
OT: Joe Biden not VP. My dreams of a Mike Huckabee-Biden VP debate lolfest have been crushed.
Punchy
You spelled “token” wrong. Here, it’s spelled “tokin'”
Dennis - SGMM
Here’s Juan Cole on the Fall of Pervez Musharraf. Bush’s “strong ally in the war on terror,” far from being the cure for Taliban and al Qaeda insurgencies in Pakistan was actually aiding and abetting them. Despite that, Bush held out, in negotiations with the Pakistanis, for Mushharraf to suffer no prosecution or any other inconvenience as a result of his nine year dictatorship.
w vincentz
Saint John huh? Well, first he needs a few miracles. If that’s beyond his ability at this point in time, I expect him to withdraw from the GOP nomination in MI and dish it to the real possible candidate, Fred Thompson. zzzzzzzzzzz
Then Johnnie is free to run for the position of power that he certainly deserves, POPE!
Sorry to the current one named after eggs benedict.
croatoan
Yes, but every Republican knows, that the tribal areas of Pakistan are beyond the Gates of Hell.
Maybe Pakistan is Mordor.
grumpy realist
Good god–now the scuttlebutt is that Joe Lieberman has a high chance of being picked for McCain’s VP.
If a majority of the US picks a McCain/Lieberman set-up for POTUS and VPOTUS, we deserve the disaster that will happen. Mr. Bomb-bomb-bomb Iran together with Mr.Likud. With Putin playing both of them like a violin. And the Holy-Roller fundies cheering on the march towards the Rapture, all the way.
A.J.P. Taylor said something a long time ago which I have never found reason to disagree with:”there must be something in the Mideast which drives men insane.”
Mike D.
Bobo has been beneath contempt for years, so no new tale to tell there, but whatever happened to McCain’s Head-Splodin’ trigger phrase: “Dad heard the tapes, John”? The Lerxtwood Elephants must be really serious about throwing the game to the Syrinx Donkeys this time around. And who can blame them, but Christ, you’d think they’d _pretend_ at least, wouldn’t you? Ross Perot was a pretty tough nut in comparison. Songbird has gone ballistic on cue for a generation, and also gone ballistic without a cue just to stay in practice. What kind of sick game is this?
A Mormon, a character actor, and a self-aggrandizing crook, among a white wrinkly stage-full of others, and one of the Keating Five floated to the top like a turd in a toilet? This is depressing.
Delia
ZOMG! It’s the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (or Five or Six, depending on how you count them). The Fundies are right but they’ve got their cues all mixed up. We’re all going down in a mad swirl of incompetence and bad writing and only the Putin knows how to play his cards right. We’re too full of insane egomaniacs.
jbarntt
John Cole:
And don’t you dare wonder why we should vote to give this guy control of the country when he can’t even control the direction of his campaign.
Uh, looks like McCain is doing OK in that dept. His polling numbers both nationally and in the swing states have been improving, he is closing in on Obama.
Why? Shut up, that is why! Don’t question his patriotism! You know he was a POW, dontcha!
I don’t question his patriotism, do you ? If you do, then say so. Say what what think, and honestly.
Honest to God the conversion of you from a moderate conservative/libertarian to a flaming liberal is amazing. Do you have no real principles ? Are you just essentially a troll on your own blog ?
Bedlam UK
It seems to me that even if that Cross story is not in the Gulag book, it has a history going back to Billy Graham in the ’70’s.
Go on McNugget, call all those Christians liars.
I would just LOVE for the Russians to run with the story.
‘American Presidential Nominee stealing Russian stories of faith and heroism.’
A nice big story like that slapped across the Russian pages.
oh and I love the Patton idea, but he’s standing on the shoulders of other survivers for his grandstanding. You cant hurt him without hurting all those others that sacrificed so much.
He makes me sick.
TenguPhule
And that’s why people who support McCain are fucking idiots.
TenguPhule
Let us know when Fuckstain Flipflop McCain does so.
Conservatively Liberal
I go with I’ll question his patriotism as much as he and his campaign question Obama’s patriotism. Sounds fair enough to me. If he or his campaign question the patriotism of a fellow American who he is running against, all in an attempt to gain the highest office in the land, then you are damn right I will question his patriotism.
McCain wasn’t thinking of our country when he chose to go travel that low road, he was thinking of himself. While he let Lieberman make the statement, he endorsed it and has not rejected it.
Do you think that is patriotic of McCain? I sure don’t.
vaux-rien
I don’t question his patriotism, do you ? If you do, then say so. Say what what think, and honestly.
If you’ve fallen for this bought-and-sold crook’s maverick act I’m not surprised that you completely missed the point but you do a good job of illustrating it nonetheless.
Question McCain’s judgement, his record, his ability, his temperament, tactics, ethics or any of his other obvious failings and you’re sure to be met with cries of “FIVE AND A HALF YEARS!!!”
I’m glad to concede McCain’s patriotism and I think he’s well qualified to be Grand Marshall of any number of Veteran’s Day parades. If he aspires to more responsibility than that I’ve got some questions and they’re not about his patriotism.
With the help of the press the McCain camp has done a great job framing every question that way, if pointing this out is somehow in violation of what you consider “real principles” I’m afraid the problem is yours.