The New Meaner More Popular McCain

By Jason Kosena

John McCain knows how to dish it out.

If you’ve been paying attention to the presidential race the last couple of weeks, you’ve noticed the bruising attacks McCain has leveled against his opponent, Barack Obama.

They’ve been hard to miss.

McCain, in Denver today and Wednesday for a fund-raising blitz, was in town last week speaking to a Hispanic group of veterans at the American GI Forum annual convention, where he dropped one bomb on Obama after another — including the intimation that Obama would rather lose the war in Iraq than the election — before heading to Aspen to meet with the Dalai Lama.

McCain’s war-and-peace tour through Colorado was just the latest example of his about-face approach to wooing voters since becoming a well-known candidate nearly a decade ago.

The transition from the easygoing, maverick campaigner who coined his popularity in 2000 as a straight-talking politician when he was battling President Bush in the primary season to the McCain who showed up in Denver last week was documented by TCI’s sister site The Washington Independent. TWI has been on the trail with McCain in recent weeks.

Despite the attacks — or maybe because of them -— McCain’s favorability in Colorado has grown in recent weeks, and maybe that’s his strategy.

Read the rest of the article at The Colorado Independent.