Posted on 01/31/2008 7:52:48 PM PST by Hoodat
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was close to leaving the Republican Party in 2001, weeks before then-Sen. Jim Jeffords (Vt.) famously announced his decision to become an Independent, according to former Democratic lawmakers who say they were involved in the discussions.
In interviews with The Hill this month, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and ex-Rep. Tom Downey (D-N.Y.) said there were nearly two months of talks with the maverick lawmaker following an approach by John Weaver, McCain’s chief political strategist.
Democrats had contacted Jeffords and then-Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) in the early months of 2001 about switching parties, but in McCain’s case, they said, it was McCain’s top strategist who came to them.
At the end of their March 31, 2001 lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Bethesda, Md., Downey said Weaver asked why Democrats hadn’t asked McCain to switch parties.
Downey, a well-connected lobbyist, said he was stunned.
“You’re really wondering?” Downey said he told Weaver. “What do you mean you’re wondering?”
“Well, if the right people asked him,” Weaver said, according to Downey, adding that he responded, “The calls will be made. Who do you want?” Weaver this week said he did have lunch with Downey that spring, pointing out that he and Downey “are very good friends.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Romney: "I AM NOT IN FAVOR OF RETURNING TO THE DAYS OF REAGAN!"
Thanks for the ping!
There was a MA GOP?
Where? In some remote valley of the Berkshires?
Have they sent out search parties?
Yes, you're right.
What will it take to convince some of you Rudy lovers that your Rudy is a loser.
Give it some time. The infatuation will end.
Any Republican that votes for this man is a RINO loving bastard. You’re destroying the party, because the vast majority of this party doesn’t support this man...at all. You’re helping to split the GOP into a dozen pieces.
Nice try. Take a look at the record, the man couldn’t be bothered to notice the warning bells all over the place that this judicial applicant would have a very liberal record on the bench. Nope, he couldn’t get away fast enough to his long lunch at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse (again, check his schedule for that day, only 15 minutes with Tuttman. It only took a fraction of that time for a FReeper to uncover that she was a Robert Reichite. You don’t ever put people like that on the bench — ever). The blood is on his hands. That is just one of many reasons why Romney is beyond unfit to serve in any political office, period.
And P.S., I’m not supporting McCain. This ain’t and either/or thing, this is a right and wrong thing.
No, I wouldn’t accuse Romney of being seriously mentally unstable, although his obsession with power, the White House, and his pathological problem with lying makes him borderline. He really is no different than Bill Clinton in that regard.
Unfortunately, he’s the worst of the bad lot, with the record to prove it.
See, this is what has bothered me. This claim of Fred being lazy was a complete media and establishment fabrication. In other words, it was total bull$hit.
Larry King Live with Jeri & Fred Thompson, 11/30/2007
KING: How do you react to those who say Fred Thompson doesn’t want to work hard?
F. THOMPSON: I don’t usually have much of a reaction to them at all.
KING: Do you think that’s folly or...
F. THOMPSON: Yes. It’s — somebody asked me about that on one of the debates and I went — got to thinking about it a little bit. And my response to them was that I started out in a factory when I was a kid, in a small town in Tennessee. I worked and bartered my way through school. I had a family at that time. I was a prosecutor, a federal prosecutor, when I was in my 20s. I was the Watergate counsel when I was 30. I got elected to the United States Senate twice, by 20 point margins, in a state that Bill Clinton carried twice.
When I decided to do this job that Jeri was talking about, the television job, I had two jobs at that time. I’ve been called upon by the president to help judge John Roberts to be chief justice, John Roberts. I was called on by Condoleezza Rice to head up an advisory board on international security matters because that was my — one of my areas of expertise when I was in the Senate.
And I’m the father of two children under the age of five. And I said then, I said if a man can be lazy and do that, then I highly recommend it to everybody.
KING: How do you react to that critique, Jeri?
J. THOMPSON: It’s frustrating for me. I think it would be frustrating for anyone, you know, to have your — to have your spouse denigrated that way. But it’s — it’s — we did. We laughed. We really — I mean we were almost a chortle (ph) to know that he was working two full-time jobs and doing these civil service, you know, jobs on the side. And when he had — we had to keep up the highest classification for his — for him to, you know, be able to have these briefings.
F. THOMPSON: Security classification briefings.
J. THOMPSON: The security — yes, thank you — the security clearances. I mean that — that in and of itself ought to denote something, you know, about where his heart was and what he was doing. I think when there’s not much to attack, you go after these stories. And they do — they do what they can to — to look for something to try to attack him on.
He’s a slower talker. He moves a little slower. And I think that people go — and they go at that and try to think that that’s — that’s what it is. It’s just — it’s just (INAUDIBLE)...
F. THOMPSON: Slow talking, slow walking Tennessee boys (INAUDIBLE)...
J. THOMPSON: It’s just flat out ridiculous.
Tom Tancredo.
Yup, there was. They were still quite vibrant and on the rebound in the ‘90s. That was until these RINO pigs killed it.
While we can say in hindsight now what he should’ve done, the fact is that he thought it was absolutely ludicrous to declare for President so long before the cycle. We are reaching the point now that a candidate has to declare 2 to 4 years in advance to be “viable.” While he may have made the mistake now of not entering early enough, I don’t think it would’ve mattered. The media and the RINO establishment didn’t want him, they ignored his candidacy from the day after he declared onward, focusing on the likes of Rudy, et al, who was the preferred choice. They didn’t want a Conservative GOP candidate, they just wanted another liberal, and now they’re gonna get one. It just makes you sick.
Are you sure you don’t mean Tom Coburn ? Cornyn hasn’t seemed like much of a Conservative leader (although he is better than his seatmate). I actually liked DeLay, he was a tough SOB. Hastert I didn’t care for (personally, he was OK, but as a leader, he was subpar, and the fact he was a part of the IL Combine was not good. The Combine is the reason they ran the excellent Conservative Pete Fitzgerald out of the Senate and replaced him with Obama. Had they supported Fitzgerald, Obama would still be an obscure state legislator today).
Well, I’m not voting for McCain, either, even in the general election, but he will probably be the nominee at this point, and we should pray he picks somebody like Gov. Mark Sanford or Tom Coburn as his running mate and then kicks the bucket (which I expect he will early in his term, he’s already older than his father was when he died). But Romney I’d crawl over glass to vote against. He really would make me vote for Hillary or Obama to stop him. My big disqualifier is that I won’t vote for people who lie to my face, and that guy doesn’t even know how to be honest. How he gets any Republican or Conservative support absolutely defies the imagination. I’ve been at the forefront leading the charge against him since he started to seriously float his name about 2 years ago and I have no intention whatsoever in stopping now.
What will it take to convince some of you Rudy lovers that your Rudy is a loser.
What the anti-Giuliani crowd on this board refuses to acknowledge is that Rudy was an effective leader under some of the worst circumstances an executive could have, and beat the Democrats soundly with his vision on crime, taxes, and leadership.
He’d make a great VP now, and a great president in 2012.
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