John McCain Goes In For The Disgusting



By heaven inspired. (image via politico)

There was once a time when this blog actually admired Senator John McCain. How's that for an embarrassing revelation (The Corsair pops open a bottle of the fizzy)? It began with John McCain's principled 2000 campaign in which he was so thoroughly routed by Karl Rove's racist, disgusting end-run in South Carolina which, we cannot fail to note, smarmily reminded the non-ironic Bud drinkers in that electorate about the Senator's brown-skinned adopted daughter. McCain then, off and on afterwards, stood athwart the excesses of the Bush administration: as the founding member of the Gang of 14, on the subject of torture, and on the Bush tax cuts during two major wars.

But the proximity to Power did something to McCain. It ate at his already ravaged soul. It rattled his already shaken noggin. The change began, swiftly, when the Senator from Arizona embraced Bush in 2004 (see above), chucking his principles to the wind after a marginal -- if that -- President (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment). Securing the nomination entailed that smarmy sell-out. And it is a slippery slope, selling one's Ass out like that. Insincerity accumulates; soulfulness ossifies.

Recently, McCain, who secured his party's nomination, is quite simply sinking into the primordial ooze with his crypto-fascist campaign, appealing -- just as Rove did seven years ago -- to the lowest of the low on the subject of race. From Time's Joe Klein:

"So Barack Obama graciously says that Reverend Wright's comments are a legitimate political issue and this is John McCain's response? If this be an honorable campaign, I wonder what McCain would consider the gutter to be.

"A reminder: This is Obama's former minister. Obama has repudiated Wright's wrongs in no uncertain terms. What McCain is doing--on top of his assertion that Obama was the 'Hamas candidate' over the weekend--is, not to put too fine a point on it, putrid."

So true.