Interesting take Michael Medved had about the anger much of the base has towards McCain. He told Tucker Carlson today that Rush and those hurling the anger are acting like liberals: (h/t Newsbusters)
Transcript:
TUCKER CARLSON: Why exactly do you think — let’s put our shrink’s hat on here — why do [conservative radio talk show hosts] hate McCain so much?
MICHAEL MEDVED: Well they’re acting like liberals, and I know that’s a terrible thing to say about people I like and respect — I have great respect for Rush. But he’s acting like a liberal on this. Liberals allow personalities and emotions and feelings over issues, substance and policy. And that’s what they’re doing here. Because if you actually look at the three essential elements of the Reagan coalition: security, economics and social issues — McCain is solid. He is very conservative. He is a traditional Reagan Republican, and there is no policy reason, there is no issues reason, for people to be so hostile to him and to call him all these names and to bang on him day after day after day. I actually believe that talk radio is hurting itself more than they’re hurting Senator McCain.
MEDVED: And the truth of the matter is, what I think this is showing is that talk radio may be losing some of its influence, and we deserve to, unless we open up at least to some alternate ideas and give a little bit more balanced perspective.
While I agree much of the right is reacting with emotion I would disagree with his assessment that McCain is a true conservative. The emotion is coming from knowing and understanding the man is NOT a true conservative. McCain-Feingold? McCain-Kennedy? Calling those who want immigrants to learn English a bunch of racists? His opposition to the Bush tax cuts and so on and so on.
But I will grudgingly agree with Ben Domenech’s take on the man. He has many many faults. As did Bush. Bush is no where near my perfect conservative choice but on three issues, the War on Terror, judges and tax cuts he was on the right side.
Will McCain be?
It’s true: stubborn and irascible, John McCain’s living rendition of Don Quixote has been infuriating to watch. He always had a bit of the mad saint of the valley to him—a quality that has only increased with age. His breaks from conservative doctrine are manifold, but fewer in number than those of several of his fellow Senators. Yet McCain’s breaks seem so much greater than those of, say, John Warner—why? Because when he goes on his separate path, he damn well wants you to know it, and know that he thinks you and his other conservative opponents to be inches from Lucifer for your damnable orthodoxy.
Or as Lileks put it: “I like John McCain. He seems like the sort of guy you could have a beer with, right up to the moment where he smashes the bottle on the table and jams it in your face over something you said six years ago.”
Yet this is also what I’ve always admired about McCain, even if conservatives curse him in the course of legislative battle: he is the same man, whichever side he is on. He brings that same infuriating passion to our cause when his inner compass has led him to alliance. His support of the surge confounded the glitterati of the MSM, who gave him every opportunity to break with the president in a fashion that would’ve led to countless more cover appearances for the late-night self-pleasuring of pimply interns of the New Republic. And yet he could not be agreeable to them, as tempting as the doyennes and the cameras were: he rambled through, grousing yet triumphant, middle fingers raised to Rumsfeld on the right and the New York Times on the left. Even if you dislike McCain, you have to admit: It was a glorious moment for him.
With Rudy’s ship sinking, Fred a non-factor, and Huckabee hampered by lack of foreign policy chops and a shoestring budget, the opportunity was there for McCain—once the establishment pick, imploded and then reborn, to once again don the armor and save the unseen Dulcinea and her doubtless properly filed FEC paperwork.
We are left with two realistically possible nominees, with hopes for a brokered convention dashed. In 2008, the question has become: do you support the calculating unprincipled friend, or the passionate principled foe?
For me, it came down to three choices, made on three critical fronts: McCain’s decision to side with President Bush on the surge, with President Bush on Alito and Roberts, and against President Bush on the largest entitlement in the history of America. In each of these areas, we were and are agreed—and in each, McCain displayed the courage and patriotism he has always possessed—the strength of character to do what he believed was right, regardless of whether it was popular.
So here we are, at the turn of the tide—and you go to the polls with the candidates you have, not the candidates you want. Saint John McCain of the Campaign-Finance Cross versus Willard of the North, well-mannered Ken Doll? The choice is an easy one for me. Let’s help old Don Quixote into the saddle one more time, and set him on his merry way, to win or lose with him.
The Reagan coalition survived Read my lips. It survived Bob Dole’s peanut butter. It survived compassionate conservatism and its kid stepbrother national greatness. And it will survive John McCain and everything he will do as our nominee and as president. In fact—in a twisted version of the ancient Vulcan proverb “Only Nixon could go to China”—only McCain can save it.
They will say the coalition is dead—but we will know better. We know it only sleeps. We will cast our votes knowing that the day will come, four years from now, when a new leader, one who knows what the shining city truly means, stands in front of the fresh-dug tomb, and calls into the blackness, as if to Lazarus—”Come out!”
And when we hear it, we will rise from out of our stupor, dust cobwebs from our arms, stumble to the door, our eyes blinking in the sunlight … and we will know our day has come.
It’s okay, you can smile. The bastards won’t know what hit ’em.
He isn’t my first choice, nor my second or third, but as I wrote here yesterday, you deal with the cards dealt you, and McCain appears to be the hand dealt to us, and I will not….WILL NOT….hand the keys over to a pure Socialist leader like Obama or Hillary. Some say we need to teach the country a lesson by handing it to either of those two, I couldn’t disagree more. The next President will pick one, possible two Supreme Court justices who will stay on that bench long after their terms are done. A liberal court gave us Roe v. Wade and a host of other terrible decisions we deal with 30 years after the fact.
That is not a gamble I’m willing to take. To hand over to my grandkids a society shaped by a liberal Supreme Court.
With McCain I know he will support our military, as he did with the surge. With McCain there is a better then 50/50 chance he puts up a conservative justice to SCOTUS. With Hillbama there is NO chance of that happening.
So, I will cast my vote for McCain and as Ben said, in four years dust the cobwebs from my shoulders and fight to get a real conservative to take his place.
UPDATE
Ugh, here is McCain flip-flopping on his own amnesty bill: (via Hot Air)
And more of his Edwardsesqe class warfare crapola via Michelle Malkins live blog of the debate:
McCain is asked about housing rescue.
“There are greedy people on Wall Street who need to be punished.”
Not a word about the greedy homeowners and their brokers who pitched in.
Is this the Democrat or GOP debate? I thought John Edwards dropped on. Turns out he’s on stage at the Reagan Library!
McCain is asked how he is more qualified to lead than Romney on the economy.
He served for “patriotism not for profit.”
Man o’ man….a bad hand has sure been dealt to us.
Sigh….
UPDATE II
A good take on the debate tonight on McCain by Beldar:
– John McCain is a grumpy, grumpy old man. He is mean. And he rambles.
– McCain’s nasty and deceitful distortion of Romney’s supposed endorsement of a “secret timetable” for an Iraq withdrawal managed to put Romney in the unfamiliar (but welcome and sympathetic) position of someone badly sinned against. The harder McCain struggled to repeat the charge and defend it, the more petty and disingenuous he seemed.
– I became gloomy tonight trying to imagine John McCain debating Barrack Obama in the general election. If McCain does become the GOP nominee, he should refuse all face-to-face debates, and just let Obama call him a coward. That charge might not stick badly anyway, but whatever damage is inflicted by McCain’s refusal to debate would be less than the damage that would be inflicted in the debates — regardless of substance. The contrast in age, energy, hopefulness, optimism, and articulateness would be devastating — vastly more damaging than Nixon’s sweat and five-o’clock shadow, which probably cost him more votes than were the margin of his loss in the 1960 election against Kennedy.
He has a great point about going up against Obama. If its Hillary I won’t be worried too much, but Obama….ouch.
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