Thursday, December 23, 2010

Basic Instincts

For much of his career, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was one of the foremost champions of immigration reform. Then a few things happened. He lost the 2008 election to Barack Obama -- an event which unquestionably left him spectacularly bitter. He also faced a right-wing primary challenger in 2010 that left him racing to deny he ever was a maverick.

And so when the DREAM Act came to the floor, McCain voted nay. Grant Woods, an old friend of McCain and his first chief of staff, explains why:
Woods said "it hurts" McCain to vote against legislation like the Dream Act after years of working on reform but said the senator felt betrayed when Latinos overwhelmingly supported Obama in 2008. "When you carry that fight at great sacrifice year after year and then you are abandoned during the biggest fight of your life, it has to have some sort of effect on you," he said.

So basically, much like everything else McCain has done over the past two years, his DREAM Act vote was a fit of pique to wound those who kept him out of the Oval Office. Of course, it's no mystery why Latinos broke hard for Democrats in 2008, and it seems like their instincts that Senator McCain was naught but a fair-weather friend were spot on. "Country first", indeed.

5 comments:

Ivan Ludmer said...

Except that even that's too generous to McCain.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_12/027225.php

N. Friedman said...

It sounds like McCain is saying that he lacks political support among his constituents to support what, in Arizona, is a controversial position.

The alternative to McCain would, of course, likely be a tea party person. So, things could be a lot worse.

joe said...

This post title is singularly appropriate. Successful politicians are, in essence, sociopaths.

chingona said...

If McCain votes the same way as the Tea Party person would, I'm not sure how it could be a lot worse.

PG said...

Adding to chingona's comment, McCain is actually more difficult to remove or even just criticize than Generic Tea Partier would be, because of the residual affection that the press feels for him and his stature as a POW/war hero. A Tea Partier with no military experience who says ludicrous things about how ending DADT would affect combat readiness is given less deference than McCain's equally ludicrous statements on the subject.