On His Final Tour of Duty John McCaine Reflects on Sarah Palin and Other Mistakes
Introduction:
John McCain still don't see what he unleashed on the GOP which was like a virus that grew slowly but without obstacles. His running mate which look like he could not find anyone else(not true) and picked what people said was the bottom of the barrel.
Sarah Palin
It was not her inexperience in politics and many other imperfections but what came out of her through her megaphone vocal chords with that scratching noise worse than an SNL comediane impersonating her. Once she decided to be on a topic (without studying first but because it sounded good at the moment) she will defend it with her life. She would cover it up and repeat it like if that would make true. She lied about her personal life and about her personal life again, because she did not know politics but you would expect it to at least the facts she gave about her life since people didnt know her to be true and get it right. It wasn't until someone from the media got to show her otherwise that she opposed for what she was now fighting for, or her daughter was contradicting her. I remember how she defended how informed she was by reading magazines until the question came, which ones? She didn't know but now she defended not reading magazines.
Do you see the connection to today? Between, Littman who was more interested in his Israel rather than his oath as Senator of the United States to Palin. This brought a bad habit to the party which it got to be heroin ans they could not get rid of it: "Openly lying" and taking the american people like Trump would say according to what his been attributed to his son in law 'I can lie to them because they are dumb.'
Trump said while campigning in NYC that he could shoot someone on fifth Avenue and his poll numbers would not go down.
These type of trash, which cover most of the GOP on both houses even extended to the House of Representatives and its speaker Ryan firing someone who does not do much and has 0 impact on that institution, the man that give his prayer at the beginning of a session of the Hosue of Reps., The Chaplain. Reason? Ryan didn't like his last prayer in which he sounded too much middle of the road instead of Republican. Crazy? Not for this bunch. There is no price to pay for the spaker for doing this, not because he is retiring but because this is something that wont be followed by the media since Trump is on 24 hr/7 day coverage. It was reported and Ryan got hell for it and the Chaplain reinsteaded, instead he will resign in the future and it will make no noise. Ryan thought to be like Trump, "you are fired" That's how trump does it but Ryan is no Trump. All he had to do was call the bishop and the Chaplain would been out before the morning prayers
The billionaires who own the media are scared Trump will cost them money or ratings so they give you a repeat of what eveyone else is giving you, vanilla. No one comfronts Trump on a lie, no one. So he piles and they all loose track, even on the era of the play back and live video. Thanks McCain. One thing he had which the other Senators in his Party don't have and is that he could be persuaded with the truth (sometimes), the times that he wasn't following that gut feeling and being a good party member took presedence of the truth but at least one could try and so say senators that try to convince him about a particular bill or action to be taken. He would listen and try to do the right thing even if it turned out wrong. Adam Gonzalez🦊
When historians — or, really any of us — look back at President Trump’s ascent to the presidency, they will identify many moments over the years, big and small, that could be identified as warning signs of the catastrophe to come. There was the Great Recession, the aftereffects of which hollowed out communities that thrilled to Trump’s nativism. On a much more micro scale, there was the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011, where Trump was ritually humiliated by Seth Meyers and Barack Obama, perhaps fueling the white-hot rage behind his White House bid.
But in purely political terms, one other moment leaps to mind: the day in 2008 when John McCain upended expectations by picking then-Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his vice-presidential running mate. It’s not as if Republicans hadn’t worn the badge of anti-intellectualism before (see: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush). But Palin personified a dangerous new strain. She (infamously) didn’t read much; put forth few policy positions beyond “drill, baby drill”; excelled at whipping up crowds into a frothing frenzy; and attacked Barack Obama in brazen, personal terms. Stylistically, she seemed to be almost completely at odds with McCain, a deeply conservative traditionalist who prefers military wars to cultural ones.
But by and large, the GOP base adored Palin. Its loving embrace of such an unhinged figure was an early sign that the Republican Party was far more willing to tolerate qualities once thought to be disqualifying for public life than many people understood.
Throughout the campaign, and since, McCain has steadfastly defended Palin. But in a story reported from his Arizona ranch, where the senator is relaxing between treatment for brain cancer and receiving old friends during what may be his final days, the New York Timesreports that McCain does have regrets about his VP pick. The reason for his discontent — which he has elaborated on in an upcoming book and movie — is that he wishes he had trusted his instincts and picked Joe Lieberman instead.
While he continues to defend Ms. Palin’s performance, Mr. McCain uses the documentary and the book to unburden himself about not selecting Mr. Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent, as his running mate.
He recalls that his advisers warned him that picking a vice-presidential candidate who caucused with Democrats and supported abortion rights would divide Republicans and doom his chances.“It was sound advice that I could reason for myself,” he writes. “But my gut told me to ignore it and I wish I had.”
Setting aside Joe Lieberman’s many faults, before the 2008 election and since (and the fact that McCain-Lieberman would be unlikely to perform better among voters than McCain-Palin did), it’s striking that, even at this late stage, McCain won’t admit that Palin represents the same variation of grievance politics he now abjures.
McCain, who President Trump has taunted in grossly personal terms (“I prefer war heroes who weren’t captured”) has been one of the few Republicans to consistently take on the president. He has attackedTrump’s “spurious, half-baked nationalism” and furiously criticized his continuous praise of Vladimir Putin. And while he often votes for the president’s priorities, making his everlasting “maverick” label something of a joke, he was the deciding “no” to kill Obamacare repeal in the Senate, an act of apostasy that has earned Trump’s perpetual ire.
But McCain is not just unpopular with the far right because of his #resistance moments. He’s also out of sync with the GOP base in most other ways. He’s a national-security hawk in a time of Republican isolationism, a centrist on immigration in a party full of America Firsters. Beyond his policy positions, McCain is out of step in another important way: he wants Republicans to step back from the toxic, grievance-based ideology that now dominates the party.
Before he helped torpedo the GOP health care vote last summer, McCain gave a stirring speech on the Senate floor, pleading with his fellows lawmakers to return to a politics of decency and consensus.
“I hope we can again rely on humility, on our need to cooperate, on our dependence on each other to learn how to trust each other again and by so doing better serve the people who elected us,” he said. “Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good.”
McCain framed the problem as a bipartisan one. But it’s the Republican party where “the bombastic loudmouths” have really gained control in recent years, culminating in the party’s surrender to President Trump. John McCain has always called himself a maverick, but he’ll end his life as all but an outcast.
It is facile to draw a straight line from Palin to this sad state of affairs. But it is striking that, even now, McCain cannot, or will not, fully reckon with the forces he helped unleash.
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