The Real McCain

I had quite a bit to say about John McCain back in 2000. After Dubya beat his ass in the GOP primaries, I moved him into the category of somebody whose cooperation is acceptable when offered but should not be counted upon, and somebody to always keep an eye on lest he seize any chance to slip a knife in your back.

Last year's presidential campaign would have been Sailor's big chance for payback had he taken it. By signing on as John Kerry's running mate, McCain, if his reputation as a swing-voter getter is anywhere near being bona fide, could conceivably have propelled Lurch over the top, and realized his ultimate dream of screwing George Bush and sending him back to fence-mending in Crawford, Texas.

But he didn't. Partly, I concluded, because he doubtless made the calculation that Kerry couldn't win, and partly because he wouldn't defect to the Democrats for anything less than the top spot on their ticket, but mostly because (or so we thought) he still wanted to run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008.

I'm now re-thinking that conclusion in light of McCain's siding against breaking the Democrat confirmation filibuster and this story that broke yesterday:

Republican officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said McCain told fellow GOP senators at their closed-door weekly lunch he believes Democrats will agree to a yes or no vote on nearly all of the seven judicial candidates they blocked during Bush's first term. In addition, he described Reid as a man of his word and said Republicans should trust reassurances he's made about any future Supreme Court appointments. Democrats want their right to filibuster judicial appointees as part of any compromise. [my emphases]

Has this man gone senile? On what possible grounds could he believe that the minority will drop a filibuster that's been going on for close to two and a half years? Because they told him so?

I guess so, judging by the second emphasized quote. Harry Reid, a man of his word? He doesn't leave his word in one place long enough to evaluate his commitment to it. Heck, he didn't even leave his joke of a "compromise" (four of the seven appellate court picks let past while leaving the confirmation filibuster in place) on the table for more than a few days, and proceeded to whittle it down from there.

The only thing you can count on from the Vegas Vituperator is to keep right on flipping the double bird at the President of the United States and the 62 million Americans that re-elected him in large part to do the very thing of which Reid and his party continue to stand in the way.

And maybe that's what McCain was saying in the third emphasized quote. What "reassurances" has Dirty Harry made about future SCOTUS nominations? That "he doesn't intend to block votes on any Supreme Court nominees except in extreme cases." Which is a frank admission that he intends to block whomever the President selects because anybody remotely likely to be selected by Mr. Bush will be immediately denounced by Reid & Co. as an "extreme case," because that's what they've done to ten distinguished constitutionalists before them.

Either Senator McCain has finally flipped into the wonderful land of strawberries, or he got up in front of all his colleagues and honestly urged them to unconditionally surrender.

Is he still running for president in '08? Not if he's still in his right mind.

[HT: Blogs for Bush]