John McCain: The Anti-Trump
For both good and ill, Sen. John McCain of Arizona is the closest the Republican Party has to the opposite of Donald Trump. He is the moral conscience that promises to check the president's excesses, and he is the hypocritical Washington lifer whose cynical rhetoric and interventionist passions helped create the Trumpian backlash in the first place.
McCain, who was diagnosed with brain cancer in July, famously spent five-plus years imprisoned in Vietnam; Trump meanwhile received five deferments exempting him from the conflict. Trump believes that torture "absolutely works," and on the campaign trail advocated violating Geneva Convention prohibitions and overruling his own military brass if need be. (He later backtracked on the latter threat.) McCain, an actual victim of torture, is the leading Republican opponent of the practice, arguing that it "doesn't work" as an intelligence-gathering tool.
Trump almost never apologizes for his inflammatory statements, including his notorious crack about McCain's heroism: "I like people that weren't captured, OK?" McCain's extravagant apologies are almost as well-known on Capitol Hill as the temper that makes them necessary. When he still had a fighter's chance against Barack Obama for the presidency, McCain publicly rejected attempts by the GOP base to portray the then-senator as an "Arab" or even a "socialist." Trump, on the other hand, refused to fully disavow the birther conspiracy theory until September 2016.
Trump is widely loathed by the press; he gleefully adds fuel to the fire by threatening lawsuits, railing against "fake news," and calling journalists "the enemy of the people." McCain, with the exception of when he was running against a Democrat for president, has been so cozy with the national media that for years he referred to them as his "base."
But neither the Fourth Estate nor its favorite anti-Trump conservatives have grappled with how their mutually reinforcing behavior helped drive voters into the populist's arms.
The political class exacts little or no penalty on politicians, commentators, and activists who back a government intervention, particularly in the foreign policy realm, that goes disastrously wrong. McCain not only championed the war in Iraq but called Obama's 2011 foray into Libya "both right and necessary." He is forever advocating further troop surges in Afghanistan, the arming of various rebels in Syria and elsewhere, sketchy new additions to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and economic sanctions against whichever country he's not quite ready to bomb. Not only are these recommendations frequently wrong, they are typically delivered in the highest moral dudgeon.
Trump has been an explicit critic of this promiscuous interventionism, saying such non-McCainite things about Afghanistan as "I want to find out why we've been there for 17 years."
McCain's political cynicism and insincerity, too, made Trumpism more attractive. In 2006 and 2013, the Arizona senator was the GOP point man on bipartisan efforts to craft comprehensive immigration reform. But whenever he was up for a tough election—against Obama in 2008, or against immigration hawk J.D. Hayworth for Senate in 2010—McCain pandered grossly to the base, rejecting bills he'd previously co-sponsored and vowing to "complete the danged fence."
Because members of the press like him, McCain's many missteps and hypocrisies are routinely portrayed as expedient deviations from what journalists are convinced is "the real McCain." (In the most succinct two-sentence version of the genre, New York magazine columnist Jonathan Chait wrote in 2006: "Go ahead, senator, flip-flop away. I know you're with us at heart.") It is from such gaseous behavior that the phrase "drain the swamp" draws potency.
In a high-profile Senate speech July 25, McCain rousingly declared that "we are not the president's subordinates," even while casting a deciding vote to prolong Obamacare replacement legislation Trump desperately wants passed. He acknowledged his own role in the coarsening of America's political conversation, even while barking "to hell with" the "bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the internet." He invoked honor and principle while reminding experienced observers how often he has strayed from both.
As the media begin cranking out what might be their final round of encomia for the man, let us not overlook how he—and they—helped give rise to the president they both so despise.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline "John McCain: The Anti-Trump."
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What drove people into Trump’s arms? The fact that they were about to overdose on opiates when Trump came along and promised ‘to make all your dreams come true’ and ‘this is your last chance’. In fact he promised more war not less – work with Russia to ‘bomb the hell out of them’, by which he meant the rest of the world so they could plunder it. Not to mention rounding up illegals and shooting Muslims on sight. McCain, despite all his awfulness, was a bulwark against such impulses. And he succeeded and has nothing to apologize for.
McCain has a near pathological hatred of the First Amendment. And the “elites” lying about everything led to people ignoring them.
McCain-Feingold showed what he thought about the First Amendment. And The Keating Five was not a jazz quintet.
What the hell are you talking about? That entire rambling statements that is crap. And yes, McCain has A LOT to apologize for.
Pay no attention to Weigel; he’s severely mentally ill and off his meds again.
McCain is the poster-fogy for term limits.
Not even close.
John McCain only has around 34 years in Congress (House 1983-1987, Senate 1987-present)
He doesn’t even make the list for the longest serving members of Congress.
The current longest serving member is John Conyers (D) at 52+ years in the House.
The current longest sitting Senator is Patrick Leahy at 42 + years.
There are 4 sitting Senators with who have been in the Senate longer than McCain, and there are 15 members of congress with more combined House and Senate time than McCain.
Won’t let me post a link because it won’t allow words over 50 characters
You can link to over-length URLs if you use HTML code:
(a href=”the URL you want to link to”)the clickable text that will be shown highlighted(/a)
Replace left and right parentheses in the above with less-than and greater-than signs, respectively.
John McCain is one of the country’s best examples of anti-libertarianism, so one of Reason’s editors expounds on what an asshole he is. It appears to me the only reason for this blog entry is to tell us why he doesn’t like Trump. A sad piece of writing.
says you.
McCain is a Statist.
I can’t wait to never see this guy in the news again. Trumps much higher on the list, but, feel goods are feel goods!
OT: Progressive bedfellow of Tony and Texas attorney tweets
“I’m not wishing for it…but I’d be ok if @betsydevos was sexually assaulted”
Because tolerance n’ shit.
Classy as always
don’t progs get tennis elbow from ripping their masks off so often?
That’s ok, I can mstantly wish for the progressive population to……….go away.
Think it’s time to go back to school
http://nbc4i.com/2017/09/08/ho…..marijuana/
McCain is arguably one of the least libertarian-minded Republican members of congress but he hates Trump.
So, of course, the TDS-afflicted Reason staffers have gone running into his arms.
Did you even read the article?
Why waste your time with something you know is going to be disingenuous and stupid?
“So, of course, the TDS-afflicted Reason staffers have gone running into his arms.”
Really?
“In a high-profile Senate speech July 25, McCain rousingly declared that “we are not the president’s subordinates,” even while casting a deciding vote to prolong Obamacare replacement legislation Trump desperately wants passed. He acknowledged his own role in the coarsening of America’s political conversation, even while barking “to hell with” the “bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the internet.” He invoked honor and principle while reminding experienced observers how often he has strayed from both.”
Running into his arms with a bat to beat him senseless, perhaps.
Totally not insane
Speaking of Derp
Patrick Mitchell was 12 when somebody managed to completely confuse him to the point where he “begged” his parents to allow him to “transition” to being a girl. They seemed thrilled at the prospect and began medical procedures almost immediately.
I have yet to hear of a “transgender child” with parents who have anything less than complete enthusiasm. It seems oddly convenient.
Read older articles. Trans kids need support, but they don’t always get it, so the trend is finding supportive families for articles. Just talk to any big city LGBT center and we’ll tell you how many trans kids end up homeless due to unsupportive families.
I checked Wikipedia’s entry on David Prescott Barrows, and was distracted by this:
“While claiming to have no bias against communists, Barrows asserted they were by nature violent, despite the fact that the widely democratically supported Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 came to power without a single shot fired…”
“…until after they’d won.”
McCain is the Republican equivalent of Hillary Clinton: a war monger, a statist, a Washington insider. And on a personal level, he is vain, incompetent, amoral, and petty. I am quite undecided which of the two I find more deplorable.
Truth. I do think the Clintons are more professional criminals. I wouldn’t want either in the White House though. McCain might be worse just because he gets to play the bi-partisan card which is worst case scenerio. At least with Hillary you might get some opposition.
Yeah, there has to be some form of, well, not ‘admiration’, but something for the Clinton Foundation, up and running and soliciting contributions from sovereign nations while that miserable fucking hag is negotiating with them as SoS!
I don’t think Bill’s balls are that big; maybe hers are.
“the Clinton Foundation, up and running and soliciting contributions from sovereign nations while that miserable fucking hag is negotiating with them as SoS!”
Totally not news worthy.
“admiration” used to mean astonishment – now it has a more positive connotation
What do you know, I was right
The tumor is the best part of the contents of McCain’s skull.
No, that wasn’t my point. I can wish the Senator a long healthy life *and* a removal from political office…at the same time.
I don’t trust that etymology. To me it seems pretty obvious “admire” comes from “look at”, ad- being the preposition, “mire” cognate to mirror & Spanish mira.
Mire is such a dirty subject.
https://i.redd.it/u5e44tcl40bz.jpg
Accurate. Welch plots right on the second “e” in “speedy”.
McCain may be the anti-Trump in certain ways, but the anti-PC aspect of Trump is central to what it means to be Trump. McCain doesn’t embody that.
For the millionth time, Trump didn’t win despite being excoriated in the press as a sexual assaulter, a violent brownshirt, a xenophobe, and a misogynist. He won because he was accused of being those things by progressive elitists and the press. People who were sick of being called homophobes for being Christian, stupid for not wanting to sacrifice their standard of living for climate change, racist for being white, rapists for being heterosexual, etc. flocked to Trump because they were sick of being denounced as those things themselves. When they saw Trump being accused of the same things they were sick of being accused of, it made Trump seem like he was one of the average people–unusually so. For the other people in the primaries to compete, they’d need to be accused of xenophobia, stupidity, misogyny, homophobia, etc. just like Trump was.
The real anti-Trump was somebody who was all but canonized by the elites and the press for not being xenophobic, stupid misogynist, homophobic, etc. We probably shouldn’t call him the anti-Trump though, that would be putting the cart before the horse. It isn’t that Barack Obama was the anti-Trump; it’s that Trump was the anti-Obama.
Where Obama was neocon, Trump is pragmatic.
Where Obama was the virtual embodiment of PC, Trump is the virtual embodiment of anti-PC.
That and the non-stop 24/7/365 news ‘coverage.’ I still can’t open a news page without seeing Trump on the front page a minimum of 6 times. I still remember changing channels between the three different news channels and all three were talking about Trump at the same time. It was a gloriously disgusting ironic self fulfilling prophecy.
That and the non-stop 24/7/365 news ‘coverage.’ I still can’t open a news page without seeing Trump on the front page a minimum of 6 times. I still remember changing channels between the three different news channels and all three were talking about Trump at the same time. It was a gloriously disgusting ironic self fulfilling prophecy.
Joe Arpaio primaries McCain, beats him badly and wins seat in a coronation. I can dream.
Are you fucking serious? That’s your dream? That’s like selecting dinner from the Bristol Stool Chart.
Oh that would set the left off into an absolute meltdown, I approve! Heck the writers here would have a new Reason to live led by the triggered Shika!
LOL!
That WOULD be fun! And would STILL be an improvement over McCain!
Pat Tillman was never killed in Afghanistan, and he comes back to run for McCain’s seat.
That’s the dream.
“I’m Fucking Pat Tillman!”
The ghost of a modern day Patrick Henry.
And hopefully never awaken, Eth-Soc.
Arpaio (85) and McCain (81, facing an aggressive form of brain tumor) are both too old to reasonably run for office.
McCain is a coot of rapidly advancing senility. He is perhaps the most prominent architect of and biggest proponent for the perpetual war state. He sires two generations back were Admirals, and he is a retired Navy Captain, a legacy he has sullied with his willingness to throw American lives into the Middle East meat grinder.
As a politician, he is unworthy of praise, no matter how qualified. He is not and never was a “maverick.” He is the most status quo of politicians: a cynical backroom dealer, a man of substantial wealth and power, a man who loves to “reach across the aisle,” because, my friends, his own hand is in no danger whatsoever.
Governor of New York sides with his fellow Italian-Americans over the SJWs re Columbus statue, but wouldn’t mind if a hurricane “accidentally” blew it over “and saved us all this controversy.”
The first part is the one I didn’t make up.
Hard to excerpt this article, but suffice it to say that you can’t speak cracker in Oregon.
“An acclaimed British conductor has been fired from a prestigious American music festival after a seemingly innocent joke he made to a black friend was labelled racist.
Matthew Halls was removed as artistic director of the Oregon Bach Festival following an incident in which he imitated a southern American accent while talking to his longstanding friend, the African-American classical singer Reginald Mobley.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new…..ed-racist/
“do you want some grits?”
Oh, yeah, I got yer grits right here!
Oregon Bach Festival at Berwick Hall
975 East 18th Avenue
Eugene, OR 97403
(Don’t send them any grits, save that for the hurricane victims)
John McCain while young was a knelt prostrate in front of a turgid thrusting Nietschze balls deep in his quivering veiny hams before the wars whilst stroking the young McCain’s strong stout turgid manliness into the old granite mouth of a Marxian statue dug up from some mossy Yale or Cambridge field.
Dirac had some fucking shitty commie game before while he crept about the commie and photon graves. He got wrinkly like us all and even those smooth following will soon fall to the arrogance of their bullshit but Dirac plied a spinning electron road and so the math unleashed futures dimensions I am not sure made us better than before because I now practically flee google, facebook, apple, and all sorts of justice-retarded digital invasions into my life. Often which include Reason- a place I can no longer support like many many others infected with socialist strange viruses.
??? Dirac was the one who first proposed that such a thing as anti-matter could exist. If Trump meets the anti-Trump, would they annihilate each other?
The anti-trump is ego-engorgement whilst eating the candid face of a fucking strange American elixir called fucking booze Trump. God, you know Trump hates having his name next to superimposed while sliding away Booz tiny invisible ‘e’…. yeah it all slid under that fucking shit NYC crap he likes to call his weird family home but even weirder is deep state Clintonista foibles where glad hands under golden tables don’t just finger lightning twats and glib stars but get even the eccentric drab matter quantum dreams butthole of even Lucifer himself gets noticing while the gods impatiently wander the patios of fucking time.
AC, you got better material, but I couldn’t pass it up
OT, but too good to pass up.
CA Highway One south of the Bay Area is blocked as a result of the slides and bridge damage from the rains which moonbeam predicted we’d never get again ( http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/jer…..e-not-hoax )
So, from time to time, the local rag runs an article on the hardships of the residents, never bothering to point out that if moonbeam had spent money on infrastructure rather than union pensions, there might not be a problem, and every time they do, they print this map:
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/…..o-14073137
Notice, it you will, you can access the dead-ended portions of Highway One over the Nacimiento – Fergusson Road. But, also notice that if you turn south, you’ll have to immediately stop since all the cars in front of you are aimed in the same direction on a one-way route!
What a great idea to reduce traffic: Make all dead-end streets one-way!
Reason is certainly lacking in editorial skills, but you’d think a dead-tree operation, with some hundred years’ experience could hire a proof-reader.
Sevo is the ultimate beating bursting heart of your favorite magazine, wanderers.
Gillespie is a lost child
alone on an elite island
and his 1970’s voice which
has lost all character is calling
and calling for all the fucking
boats to save him from the
swamping that is sure to
swallow his elite island
But, extremely smart minds
eyes, and spirits understand
that Gillespie’s island was
made by him and his odd people
so rich and bountiful and
thick with wrong philosophy that
perhaps and around the corner
Gillespie’s 1970’s cry along with
his rich founders and Cato’s rich, bountiful,
European madness, will fall so
fucking hard to where they all
have to get their food and mortgages
from fucking plastics people like
those horrid philosophy-bereft shits
the Kochs
Good-on God, Gillespie you FUCKING
barking leather bitch…
You steered this shit rag for 30 years because
for 30 years you got by with no one
questioning your FUCKING Leftist anti-Rand
bullshit motives
Glibertatians.com buddy. We need ur essence.
Gillespie is NOT fucking Libertarianism
Reason is NOT fucking Libertarianism
Pure and simple.
I wish Gillespie who is the dollar child
of oil magnates and Koch slash Cato
fucking funding will realize this but
oh KNOWS he won’t…
He has Everthing to correctly state about
AMERICAN police abusing lives
and almost nothing about
ISLAM abusing lives…
oh boy…. Koch brother buttholes
are getting squirrely
Accusing Cato and Reason of getting funded by “oil magnates and teh evuuul Koch brothers” sounds an awful lot like what a Leftist would say.
Peace to all those millions who choose to live on a middle finger thrust into oceanic hell.
also what the best pizza? some times i like littele caesars. i like pizza hut. dominoes. sometimes i like a plain old new yourk slice
To order the best pizza, call up the Dalai Llama and say “make me one with everything.”
Pizza Hut for formal occasions.
Dominos for party favors and throughout-the-day snacking.
Little Caesar’s if you want to announce to the world that you’re transitioning.
That is all.
{GONG}
Ellios or GTFO.
And by the way, you completely forgot McCain’s own war on free speech. It took the supreme court to stop him.
There’s a reason the left loved him and it’s not just feelz like prohibiting the use of Obama’s middle name at his rallies. Among other things, he has fought long and hard for the democrats’ preferred version of campaign finance law.
It will be interesting to see what happens to the Republican party at the next elections since they have tried to stop Trump instead of using all the power they were given to pass the voter’s agenda. It seems every time the right gets power they find some way to destroy themselves. Maybe after all the insanity in our political party system we might see an increase of new political parties people might actually vote for.
By the way, on another note, whatever happened to that whole bullshit Russia narrative? For around eight months or so it was all that the enraged, sore loser Obamatards in the media we’re talking about, and then suddenly a few weeks ago they all decided to stop talking about it entirely for some odd reason.
Shout out to agile cyborg. Co e to glibertatians.com where the real libertarians are.
Glibertatians.com. I mean. That goes for the red of you too. Fuck this place.
Glibertatians.com. I mean. That goes for the red of you too. Fuck this place.
Yet another satisfied customer for you, Welchy boy. You guys are doing a heck of a job!
OT: When Hurricane Irma hits Florida, thousands of people pledge to fire guns at the storm
Huntington Beach police officers were shot by ‘friendly fire’ from other cops, officials say
Sheriff: 13 of 20 arrested in prostitution sting are soldiers
Ban the military!
City employees nabbed after domestic disputes turned violent
Reason pitching John McCain = priceless. What further depths will they sink to in their hatred of Trump?
When you’re a left-liberal Obama momma pretending to be a libertarian (like Welch, Gillespie, and most of their underlings), it requires you to engage in constant and endless rhetorical contortions, deviations, and bizarre 180 degree spin-around jobs. And of course it’s all but impossible to maintain any kind of plausible credibility and sense of consistency when you’re so fundamentally dishonest to the core.
KC police disarm antifa groups, others at Washington Square rally
First, fuck that. Second, an “autonomous Marxist-Leninist-Maoist collective” believes in feeding some of their members very, very well.
I actually like the ones with guns- you know they’re not gonna start anything.
I get what Welch is saying, but I consider Trump and McCain to both be on the authoritarian side of the Republican coin. The biggest difference is that McCain has a set of principles he firmly believes in, while Trump does not. Paul, Amash, Massie are the opposites.
You know who else had a set of principles he firmly believed in?
He is the moral conscience that promises to check the president’s excesses
C’mon, Welch. How much did you get paid by McCain to write this?
McCain is such a selfish person that he refuses to give up his Senate seat even though many people including McCain himself suspects he will die soon.
These are the politicians we typically have. They think the USA cannot survive without them.
Reverse Ace John McCain didn’t endure the nickname “Songbird” by enduring all that much torture. Nobody who was locked up with him came away with any respect for the man.
He always plays nice with the Left – North Vietnamese, Kennedy, and Obama – while reserving his temper for anyone to his right which includes anyone the least bit conservative or libertarian.
A “true Republican” peddling long-since-disproven North Vietnamese and tabloid propaganda. Pathetic.
“McCain, who was diagnosed with brain cancer in July, famously spent five-plus years imprisoned in Vietnam;”
McCain, the poor student who should never have gotten into the Navel Academy, got in because his father and grandfather were Admirals.
McCain, the poor student who fell near the bottom of his Academy class should never have been a fighter pilot, got in the cockpit with pull based on this father and grandfather having been Admirals.
McCain, the poor pilot who should never have been in the cockpit got shot down over Vietnam almost before his flight suit needed laundered.
McCain, the failed pilot and former POW was made commander of a training squadron in Florida based once again on pull.
McCain, ran for Senate based on his status as a POW (achieved on the basis of his incompetence) and on the money from his wife’s family.
For some reason, I don’t place a lot of credence on what McCain says or does. Maybe it because he is STILL an idiot, a failure, and a fuck up.
This. ^ He’s one of history’s greatest textbook cases of a guy “failing upward”.
And yet he still showed more courage than you have in your most imaginative wet dreams.
I wonder what that makes you then?
John McCain and Donald Trump are both headline seeking glory hounds. They are both to the left as Republicans go. The main difference is McCain has manners and respect for others, Trump doesn’t.