Huffington: John & Cindy McCain didn't vote for Bush in 2000

[RamboLiberal]

At a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election, I was talking to a man and his wife, both prominent Republicans. The conversation soon turned to the new president. "I didn't vote for George Bush" the man confessed. "I didn't either," his wife added. Their names: John and Cindy McCain (Cindy told me she had cast a write-in vote for her husband).

The fact that this man was so angry at what George Bush had done to him, and at what Bush represented for their party, that he did not even vote for him in 2000 shows just how far he has fallen since then in his hunger for the presidency. By abandoning his core principles and embracing Bush -- both literally and metaphorically -- he has morphed into an older and crankier version of the man he couldn't stomach voting for in 2000.

McCain's fall has been Shakespearean -- and really hard to watch for those, like myself, who so admired and even loved him. His nobility and his true reformer years have given way to pandering in the service of ambition.

-----

The John McCain the media fell in love with in 2000 isn't on the ballot in 2008. And the proof has all but jumped up and grabbed the media by the throat: the ring-kiss of "agents of intolerance" Falwell and Robertson; the decision to make permanent tax cuts he twice voted against, saying he could not "in good conscience support" them; the campaign finance reformer replaced with a candidate whose campaign is run by lobbyists and fueled by loophole rides on his wife's jet; the hard-line stance against torture replaced by a vote allowing waterboarding; the guarded-by-a-battalion stroll through the "safe" neighborhoods of Baghdad; the use of Karl Rove as an advisor... and the embracing of the disastrous policies of a man he so abhorred he would not vote for him.

What will it take for the Swift Boat Media to realize that John McCain jumped the shark a long, long time ago?



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/what-john-mccain-told-me_b_100183.html

[Happyhippychick]

1. Alright, so the man has one redeeming quality....

[lisa58]

2. Why would they?

...with all the threats from DU members about who they will and will not vote for if....

The McCain's were the actual target - I'll never understand why McCain campaigned for Bush in 2004.

[zanne]

3. McCain lost to Bush in 2000...

There were alot of bad feelings there. I don't what convinced McCain to forgive and forget, but it must have been a doozy of a deal.

[RamboLiberal]

4. To me McCain showed a lack of independence & courage

when he kissed up to Bush. He sold his soul, and not just to Bush, for another try at the WH.

I admired to some extent the McCain of 2000 and always thought he should've been the Repuke nominee that year.

And I was one of those who wished he had run with Kerry. I think it might've brought Kerry victory and got Bush out of the WH.

McCain should've kept his independence from Bush, turned Dem or even turned independent in 2001 the way Jim Jeffords had the guts to do.

[liberal N proud]

6. This election season is the very reason he voted bu$h in 04

He was promised the nomination. The fact that his campaign went from DOA to front runner is just enough evidence for me to honestly believe it.

[melody]

7. BushCo gets people to do what they want with intimidation, death threats and blackmail

They don't have to rely on loyalty.

[bullimiami]

5. but did mccain vote for him in 2004 when it was obvious that

not only was bush incompetent but that he was a heartless vicious bastard?

i can forgive a vote for bush in 2000 due to ignorance and force feeding bullshit from the media but
by 2004 anyone who voted for bush had to approve of him or be dumb as a box of rocks.