McCAIN GETS SLAPPED DOWN BY ABIZAID-- AND THE NUTROOTS DON'T MUCH LIKE HIM EITHER

Right wingers who are steaming over Giuliani's bid for president are unlikely to be jumping up and down when they find out that the odious McCain has also filed the same kind of "exploratory" papers. The wing nuts hate Giuliani and McCain for different reasons. Giuliani's "stance on social issues like abortion and gun control make him an unacceptable candidate."

One influential loon-- influential with the fringy kooks who run today's GOP-- Colleen Parro, would be in a mental hospital in any other society but runs a shady operation called the Republican National Coalition for Life. She issued a statement, widely read by some of the extremist elements of the Party of Darkness: "The core values of the Republican Party with respect to life issues-- which is where our main concern is-- and the issues of the homosexual movement, etc., cause his candidacy for the nomination to just be dead in the water."

Brian Darling, an official at another Republican hate group, the Heritage Foundation, concurred with his fellow extremist that the GOP base ain't biting when it comes to Giuliani. He said "it's going to be virtually impossible for Giuliani to woo voters who put the Second Amendment and family values as their top issues."

OK, what about McCain? Apparently he backed out on his vow to commit suicide if the Democrats took the Senate. He's definitely running-- and we all knew he has been even since he started giving the much-detested Bush public blow jobs and cozying up with the nut-jobs in the fringe.

From a progressive perspective McCain is just about as bad as Bush, except he's not as gung ho about torturing people. Maybe not as dumb, but just as many character flaws and totally unfit to be president.

But it doesn't matter what progressives think. What matters is what far right crackpots think. They're the ones who vote in Republican primaries. Just pick any far right blog at random and see what the kook who writes it has to say about McCain. They all hate his guts. Here-- eenie, meanie, miney, moe... ah, Myron, a complete psycho, obviously deranged and filled with hatred for America, has a blog called far right-wing minded. Nearly illiterate, Myron typifies the Republican base with his pathetic badly-written screeds. Last May he puffed himself up for a ritual denunciation of McCain:

Senator McCain will stab conservatives in the back quicker than President Bush. McCain is everything I hate so much in Bush and Carter combine in an asshole bigger than Gore. The lying stealing open-marriage phony valueless lesbian anti-American socialist elitist Hillary Clinton can be trusted more than John McCain.

Well, there you go. And while Myron's only commentor, Supplymadam, is no fan of McCain's either-- "I think he left his personality at the front door"-- Myron was so overjoyed to have a reader that he replied to her witty comment with another tongue-lashing for the hapless Senator McCain:

McCain is a huge liberal and he is the type of Republican i hate the most. Bill Frist and Pres. Bush are slowly showing the World that they are that kind of Republican too. I also despite that liberal leftist scumbag Arlen Specter and i blame Bush for his reelection because Bush supported Specter over a much more conservative candidate in the primary.

So now you know who buys Anne Coulter books and who watches Fox "News." And now I'm beginning to understand that right-wingers think of McCain, albeit irrationally, the way we think about Lieberman. Here's a kookamonga website called Right Wing News where they have a "Q&A Friday." When some foreigner asked why American wing nuts dislike McCain so much, the answer went a long way towards explaining the visceral hatred for him:

There are plenty of policies and things McCain has supported that grate on many conservatives.

He's incredibly soft on illegal immigration. McCain-Feingold campaign finance not only failed in "getting the money out of politics" & should have been ruled unconstitutional, it actually helped the Democrats gain a big 527 fund raising advantage last year. The Gang of 14 compromise was more than just "annoying." It allowed the Democrats to have extra leverage which they then used to cow Bush into selecting a spectacularly awful candidate like Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. I could go on, but let's just say that McCain seems to take an almost perverse delight in becoming prominently involved in legislation that conservatives detest.

Then there's the fact McCain isn't necessarily considered to be a loyal Republican. Back in 2002, there were some people who seriously thought McCain might switch parties. In the 2004 election, even though he turned him down in the end, McCain actually talked with Kerry multiple times about being his veep in the 2004 campaign. Can you even begin to imagine someone like George Allen or Sam Brownback switching parties? [Is the Aryan nations considered a part?] What about John Cornyn talking with John Kerry about being his vice-president? [Too many sylables for Corny.]

On top of all that, McCain is an egomaniac who seems to crave approval from the press and he has no qualms whatsoever about attacking other Republicans to get it. What McCain loves to do is trash other Republicans on issues that conservatives hold dear and then sit back and wait for the liberal press to rave about what a "straight talking maverick" he is. If this happened here and there, it might be forgivable, but it's a semi-regular thing for McCain.

Put it all together and you can see why there are so many conservatives who just will not support a McCain bid for the presidency. But McCain had bigger woes today than the Republican base's hatred-- which is, after all, spread a little thin to matter all that much anyway. Today McCain went up against the U.S. Army.


McCain is disliked on Capitol Hill for being a showboat and for his rudeness and temper tantrums. But more than most pols, he does let you know where he stands occasionally. And on Iraq, there aren't many stand where he does. Along with Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, McCain favors sending more American troops into the Iraq Civil War. Apparently these three have little regard for what the American voters just said at the polls, notwithstanding Lieberman's brush with political death, a death averted only by him declaring, at least for the duration of the campaign, that he's a peace candidate.

The Center for American Progress has a video of the nasty and clueless egomaniac trying, unsuccessfully, to bully General Abizaid. Abizaid refused to go along with McCain's harebrained notions about sending 20,000 more Americans into Iraq.

Senator McCain, I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the core commander, General Dempsey, we all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American Troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is because we want the Iraqis to do more. It is easy for the Iraqis to rely upon to us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.

McCain was red-faced and steaming. The explanation sounds easy to understand and the vast majority of Americans understand it. McCain doesn't. But he wants to be president. Just what we need-- another dictator!