What is it going to take for the media to snap out of its starry-eyed -- stuck in 2000 -- view of John McCain?
Despite an avalanche of evidence showing that McCain the Maverick has long ago been replaced by McCain the Pandering Pawn of the Party's Right Wing, the press refuses to believe its own eyes.
The latest demonstration of the enormous lag time between the presentation of a new reality and the media's willingness to update the conventional wisdom comes via those bastions of the traditional media, The New Yorker and the New York Times.
The latest New Yorker features a loving 7,000+ word profile of McCain by Ryan Lizza that portrays him as a moderate who has "the rare opportunity to reinvent what it means to be a Republican."
Let's see, McCain has bowed to the party's lunatic fringe on tax cuts, immigration, the intolerance of religious bigots, and torture... so exactly how is he reinventing what it means to be a Republican? By shortening the amount of time it takes before a candidate is hijacked by the Right, perhaps?
Don't forget, George W. Bush, circa 1999, was presented as something of a maverick -- a Republican who espoused "compassionate conservatism," got along with Democrats in Texas, was going to win over Latinos, end his party's longstanding hostility toward minorities, and govern from the center.
"My friends, this is going to be a different kind of convention for a different kind of Republican," said 2000 RNC chairman Jim Nicholson at that year's convention. "Gov. Bush has shown time and time again that he is a different kind of Republican," echoed Bush spokesman Ray Sullivan on the campaign trail.
That different kind of Republican evaporated the moment W's hand hit the Bible on inauguration day. McCain hasn't waited that long. He's already offered his proof of fidelity to the Right.
But Lizza doesn't want to buy it. Even as he lists all the examples of McCain's "brazen pandering," he insists that McCain is "principled" and "has a record of sticking to a position even when it puts his political future at risk." Other than all the times he's shifted his position in order to advance his political future, I suppose.
The media are so reluctant to give up their entrenched view of McCain that "principled" and "pandering" are no longer seen as mutually exclusive terms. Indeed, that was the animating premise of Nicholas Kristof's head-scratching column in Sunday's New York Times: that McCain has become the world's most principled panderer.
"Mr. McCain truly has principles that he bends or breaks out of desperation and with distaste," writes Kristof. In Kristof's through-the-looking-glass world, it's apparently a higher order of pandering if you start with deeply held core convictions that you trash in the name of political expediency while feeling really bad about it.
Sure, she's a whore, but she wears an abstinence promise ring and feels totally guilty when she stuffs the money in her bra, so she's not like all the other whores.
In the New Yorker piece, Newt Gingrich, in full stand up comedy mode, claims that McCain's looming nomination "is the victory of the moderate wing" of the GOP -- of which he now counts himself a member! -- and that with McCain, "for the first time since Eisenhower, you have someone who has clearly not accommodated the conservative wing winning the nomination. That is a remarkable achievement."
It says everything you need to know about how strong the Right's stranglehold on the Republican Party has become that Newt Gingrich, the original barbarian at the GOP gate leading the 1994 right wing revolution, is now considered a voice of moderation. And that capitulating on torture and tax cuts and immigration and intolerance and out-Bushing Bush on Iraq can be seen as "not accommodating" the right. Memo to Newt: making that claim while maintaining a straight face is the true "remarkable achievement."
Despite the disastrous failures of the Right on everything from Iraq to the economy to health care to the environment to global warming to civil liberties to national security, the lunatics running the Republican asylum are stronger than ever.
That's why Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and Ann Coulter have felt so comfortable taking on the role of rhetorical dominatrixes, forcing McCain to bow down and lick their boots, and why McCain -- "with distaste," of course -- has so thoroughly obliged. Even after all-but-locking-up the nomination, he still felt compelled to jettison his most deeply held belief and vote against the torture ban.
"Please, mistress -- may I have another?"
Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff
time for someone, anyone to look them straight in their crossed eyes and say, "FINE, go ahead and vote for the Democrat. You will lose more than I will!"
i often wonder why on earth these people resort to smear campaigns but then skip the best attacks. Like i care who is shtooping whom.
Where was "At the end of the Day, Dubya, 9/11 happened on your watch, and nothing you can say will ever change that YOU failed to keep America safe?" Nobody ever said it. Kerry bent over for the swiftboaters, and then wanted to be the guy to stand up for us against our External enemies?
This is STILL a good argument for Democrats. Don't vote for the war, Hillary, shout from the rooftops that you do not intend to compound Bush's massive mistakes leading to 9/11 by weakening our defenses and squandering international good will by declaring war on a totally unrelated nation! THAT would have made you "man enough" to run the country!!
Same goes for McCain now. If he can't stand up to a bunch of inbred trailer trash who think that dinosaurs and Jesus were running around together in a garden with Knowledge being forbidden because ignorance is next to Godliness, then how the F*** is he gonna stand up to Syria, North Korea, China, or the "islamofascists," whoever the hell they are?
Pandering is cowardice. Period. I'm looking to Nader now.
bush had more baggage than mccain and by nov the republican capacity for denial and hypocrisy will once again be apparent, thanks in large part to the talk radio monopoly and our lack of a Fairness Doctrine.
What you're saying is he's brave except when he must be a coward. What the hell is that supposed to mean?
No one is challenging McCain's bravery during Vietnam. What we have issue with is his whoring of his political ethos over the past few years.
Remember, the people shooting him down for being honest were *Republicans*. Dems take issue with his recent flip-flopping and caving in to people like Jerry Falwell.
recklessness. disobeyed orders, crashed equipment, got captured. endured, survived. hates gooks. forever changed.
now a globalist sword slinging quasi-neocon. certainly not conservative but certainly not a nationalist looking out for our economic freedom, sovereignty or peace.
sorry, i don't want him in charge.
McCain and even Rudy were favorites of my in 2004 and should have done one of three things:
1) Together, in any order, ran against Bush. Surely by that time they knew the score.
2) Backed Kerry to get rid of W (Worst ever).
3) Stayed out of the fray and remained neutral.
Instead both prostituted themselves for a run in 2008 and John continues to do so by pandering to the extreme right. Perhaps McCain didn't want to run against an incumbent Kerry, knowing 2008 would be his last shot.
The straight talk express has been de-railed.
How come no candidate or the media in its questions asks anything about the Israeli-Palistinian issue, the root cause of terrorism?
Interesting that of the 41,000 votes, they were split 50/50. Maybe you could learn more about the subject and try again later.
Without your column appearing, would more people have said the media is not too soft on McCain?
I used to love reading your column, back when you were a conservative and appeared on Ben Stein's game show with Peggy Noonan. What happened? Why are you a flaming liberal? Did you drink the same crazy juice that Hillary drank in college?
Come back to the party of Lincoln, Reagan, and Bush. We won't ask any questions.
Arianna, I love that you have given us a voice. Thank you for all that you do.
Not certain what I just said but it was with a great deal of hope that change will happen. First time in my adult life I ever hoped for
change.