The Mugging of John McCain

     Conservatives like to joke that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. The audience can fill in the specifics of the mugger as they choose. It could be a homeless guy, a welfare receipient, a gay or a particularly aggressive feminist. Any class of people that as a "bleeding heart" liberal one was inclined to throw tax payer money at until reality set it. It might be an immigrant of an affirmative action employee or, more recently, a receipient of unemployment insurance. The conservative has seen the light and deals with the world as he finds it.The mugger is never imagined to be a banker, hedge fund manager, health insurance representative or member of the Chamber of Commerce. Muggers come from the underclass, the objects of bleeding heart largess.

     John McCain was mugged but his is a variation of that old joke. The one time maverick who railled against the first Bush tax cuts as a giveaway to the rich and championed an immigration bill with that hated liberal Ted Kennedy and even signed on to a finance reform bill which sought to limit the  role of money in elections has been mugged not from the pathetic left but the realists of the right. His is a story of a Frankenstein's monster.

     Once described by a conservative commentator as neither a republican nor a conservative, McCain attempted to win back the disgrunteled right by a bold stroke in 2008. He chose as his vice-presidential running mate an obscure governor of Alaska whom he described as an expert on energy policy. The choice energized the right. He soon found his campaign dominated by the charismatic running mate who drew larger and more enthusiastic crowds than he could muster. After the defeat which some believe might have been worse without the governor of Alaska's mobilization of the Christian Right (others argue that she lost more independents than she gained on the Right), McCain has been reduced to a footnote to the rise of Sarah Palin.

     He now fights for air time in the media by railing against the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint chiefs and their recommendation for repeal of the Don't Ask Don't tell Policy endorsed by a Pentagon study whose findings he once said he would endorse. His is a pathetic story whose final chapter has yet to be written. Should Palin choose to run in 2012 he will be forced to either endorse his mugger whom he thought could serve as President in 2008 or an opponent whom he rejected as a running mate...A Romney or a Huckabee.

     It would be easy to dismiss him as a typical political opportunist who lacks principles above which ro rise.
More accurate I belive is the story of a politician who belives he deserves a better fate than thus far afforded him but will not yet conceed to his creation, Sarah Palin, the mantle of political leader of his party!