The Republican Right is already howling over the bombshell dropped by The New York Times on John McCain, the GOP's all-but-official nominee. It's an outrage, they say. A deliberate torpedo. A liberal media smear.
Sorry, but these guys have got it backwards. The Times, in fact, couldn't have found a moment more favorable for Johnny Mack to let this fearsome cat out of the bag. If McCain could have personally chosen when to have this story break, it would have been right about now.
Not to say that the well-researched piece that broke late Wednesday evening isn't any candidate's nightmare. It's not only a detailed run-down of McCain's awfully close friendship with a pert and well-connected lobbyist thirty years his junior; the Times also does an admirable job of rehashing the Senator's long record of cozying up to the same sort of lobbyists against whom he repeatedly rails in public.
So what's my beef? The timing, folks. The timing. Everyone who knows anyone has been hearing about this story for some months. Back in December, Matt Drudge got wind of it from inside the Times and teased it at the top of his site. We all waited, but the shoe never dropped.
Under what is said to be intense pressure from McCain and prominent D.C. criminal attorney Robert Bennett, who was hired to help deal with the matter, the Times capitulated and held off on publishing the story - offering no explanation, then or now. And if you read through the piece just published, there doesn't seem to be any new information that the Times couldn't have had two months ago.
So what, you ask? Just one small detail: In the intervening weeks between the moment when the Times was first going to publish the story and finally did publish the story, the same New York Times endorsed John McCain! And while he's described in the endorsement editorial as a "staunch advocate of campaign finance reform" he's tagged in this Wednesday's news piece as having accepted favors from those with matters that came before the very committee he used to push that reform. And many, many other favors.
More importantly, if the Times had published its expose when it first had it over Christmas, it would have preceded all of the Republican primaries and caucuses. To say it would have changed the dynamic of the GOP race is perhaps the understatement of the decade. You can bet Mitt Romney and even Mayor Rudy are up late tonight gnashing their teeth and pounding their heads against the wall over this one.
So should Republican voters. They've been seriously toyed with by the paper of record. The Times gives them McCain. And then, only after it's too late to reconsider, it takes him away. McCain might, indeed, be seriously wounded by this week's revelations. If they had come out two months ago, he would have been reduced to a political asterisk, a footnote alongside Tommy Thompson and Tommy Tancredo.
Yes, we know how the Times will plead: innocent. There's a clear division, you see, between the news side and the editorial pages of the paper. Tut tut.
More like a clear division between the real and the surreal.
McCain's worst enemy is himself: he is rumored to have a nasty temper, but lately, when he addresses crowds, he literally almost puts everyone to sleep - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!!! He practically whispers in a monotone and what's with wife #2 - she looks like she just had a Tammy Fay makeover (or Glamor Shots). We all know that McCain is surrounded by old establishment Pugs and lobbyists and he would have us in a war everywhere simultaneously.
Newsflash: I hope you've traveled as much as you want to in this life because thanks to the Bush/Cheney /McCain/Lieberman types, you're not welcome anywhere anymore - Europe, Asia, Middle East, Central and South America, Mexico, the list goes on and on. No matter what happens anywhere anymore, it is blamed on Americans. Does McCain strike you as one who believes in public relations or mending fences. Huh uh!
Speaking of loose with facts, Rush Limbaugh came out switching his statements? That's baldly false. His show is a matter of record, but obviously you're ignorant of that as well.
The list goes on and on ... give me a break. I'll have a nice laugh about that in New Delhi and Brussels this year.
This whole thing was probably contrived and released by the McCain camp to totally discredit and embarass the Times so that in the days to come and until the election nothing printed in the NY Times will be taken seriously.
It will probably be proven to be totally bogus and the sources will change their stories. You would think the media people would be a little wiser after the Dan Rather fiasco.
This smells like Rove. Throw McCain under the bus. Why? He is not 'conservative' enough. There are no Karl Goebbels Rove dogs in this fight and he can set up for 20012. Policies and practices left by Bush 43 will cause ripples (Hell... tsunamis...) through the military, the economy, and the environment that neocons will try to pin on the coming Democratic administration. What would be the best position from which Rove could set this up? hmmmm.... maybe as a political pundit on cable tv and weekly news magazines. Tune in for lies. Big ones. Repeated often.
Get Hillary elected. That way the warmongers get a good chunk of what they want, if not all, and their (allegedly) most-hated opponent and Democratic Party get blamed. 2012 becomes a shoo-in for whatever neoconartist the NYTimes and CFR prop up. smooooothe...
Sex scandal or no, Sen. Bomb Bomb Iran wouldn't be doing nearly as well if the media hasn't bent over backwards to hide his warmongering.
True indeed. But, they printed something!
The information is old, yet, an important reminder. What has taken the media so long to present McCain's full history, Lobbiest tryst/straw-woman for voter consideration.
Obviously, we have one or the other issue; an affair or covert lobbiest dealing. Homegirl was not hanging out with ol'ass McCain because of his cuddly personality. "Let's get Real!"
Why should we not consider McCain's pattern of mis-judgment, e.g., closeness to the Keating 5 issues and whats-her-name...the woman scandalizing McCain's good name. This exposure is important and worth of debate and voter consideration?
NYT publishing was fair timing. It did not defame McCain; he presented himself for the Presidency and his credibility and ethos must be examined. NYT used its judgment to print at an interlude in the primary contests and before McCain gained, officially, a full nomination.
Don't blame the Times...Where where the rest of you media people; stepping up?
The Keating Lincoln Savings scandal was full of lessons. Like, Sen. Alan Cranston was smarter than Sen. John McCain (no dummy to be sure). While McCain did the most for Keating and received the least, Cranston garnered the most and did the least. Maybe we're not Italy (where the Mafia all but ran a string of political parties from Fascist, centrist, Liberal to Communist), but the corruption of American democracy runs effortlessly over ideological fences. Each time we turn a blind eye we pay later. McCain has lots of guts, but lacks integrity. BTW for me, this isn't about sex or dating, which is none of my business, it's about political hypocrisy. The NY Times included.
The main concern with McCain is that we will have more war, more spending, bigger government, more illegal immigration, amnesty to the illegals already here, a foreign policy that will continue to create hatred towards this country, and the same amount, if not more, taxation. In short, we will have everything that the Republican party is supposed to be against.