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McCain just killed all the momentum and enthusiasm of the last week with this simple sentence in response to an angry attendee at a rally tonight: “I have to tell you, he is a decent person, a person that you do not have to be scared [of] as president of the United States." “No, ma’am. He is a decent family man, citizen"

You know who you are. You're the one posting stupid comments about what a loser Johnny is. You're the one getting on the political chat shows and telling everyone that you think Obama is super great and that he's going to win! Yeay! And your supposed to be a conservative. Why don't you shut up! I'm talking to all the whiners who piled on and joined the Chris Matthews bandwagon and declared Johnny an old man and a big dull loser. He did fine last night. He was the boss on foreign policy. He's never been a dazzling public speaker...

A LITTLE more than 100 years ago, president Theodore Roosevelt's Great White Fleet steamed into Sydney Harbour. Hundreds of thousands of Australians cheered the 16 battleships that would circumnavigate the globe as a demonstration that America was now a Pacific and a world power. On board the gunboat Panay, patrolling the Philippine archipelago, a young midshipman named John Sidney McCain - my grandfather - shared in the navy's pride at Roosevelt's audacious gesture. Only two years out of the naval academy, my grandfather would shortly be promoted to ensign and assigned to the flagship USS Connecticut for the fleet's triumphant...

PARIS (AFP) — Wall Street's sickness and its contagiousness for the world economy are bad news for the already faltering effort to craft a new pact to tackle climate change. Tighter budgets, shrinking corporate profits and worries about jobs could crimp manoeuvering room at upcoming UN talks on toughening curbs on greenhouse-gas emissions, sources say. But -- so far, at least -- the crisis does not appear to be having an impact on investment in clean technology, say these sources. Indeed, some are confident that spending on wind, solar and other renewables may even rise.

In the campaign for the hearts of the heartland - from Independence, Mo., to Lacrosse, Wis. - the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, senators both, are attempting to explain today why the financial bailout - for which they are returning to Washington -- deserves the support of voters. "Even with all these taxpayer protections, this plan is not perfect,'' Democrat Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois said today, campaigning in Wisconsin. "Democrats and Republicans in Congress have legitimate concerns about it. I know many Americans share those concerns. But it is clear that this is what we must do right...

A small group of Hispanic leaders in Arizona who are supporting Democrat Barack Obama say Republican John McCain won't enjoy the same strong support among Latinos in his home state as he has in past elections. Group member Mary Rose Wilcox said McCain's strength among Latinos has dwindled. That's primarily because he de-emphasized his support for a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants and now says border security is the first immigration priority. Wilcox, a Democrat and Maricopa County supervisor, said Hispanics view McCain's change in position as a betrayal.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain had sharp words for Congress, it the wake of the defeat of the financial system rescue plan. "They wiped out $1.2 trillion today," the Arizona Senator told KARE 11, "Congress's failure to act today is not acceptable." Despite pleas from President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, lawmakers rejected the bailout bill by a vote of 228-205. By the time the New York Stock Exchange closed, the Dow Industrial average had plummeted 777 points. Answering questions via satellite from Des Moines, Iowa McCain chided those from both sides of the aisle who opposed the plan....

McCain Likes Democrat Andrew Cuomo for SEC Chief Monday, September 22, 2008 By Susan Jones, Senior Editor (CNSNews.com) - If he's elected president, Republican Sen. John McCain says he would want Democrat Andrew Cuomo to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission. McCain, who has called for Republican SEC chief Chris Cox to resign, made the comment on the CBS program "60 Minutes" Sunday night. "I'm curious," CBS Correspondent Scott Pelley told McCain. "If you want to fire Chris Cox, the chairman of the SEC, who would you replace him with?" McCain responded: "This may sound a little unusual, but I've...

Yes, immigration is a complicated and combustible issue for political candidates — and the economic meltdown is everyone’s top priority. No, that is no excuse for ignoring immigration or lying about it to voters, as John McCain and Barack Obama have been doing.

(CNN) – A health care policy adviser for the McCain campaign told a newspaper reporter that nobody in the United States is technically uninsured, because everyone has access to hospital emergency rooms. "So I have a solution [to the health care crisis]. And it will cost not one thin dime," John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, told the Dallas Morning News in an interview published Thursday.

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in an important shift, said on Friday he backs a plan for the federal government to provide low- interest loans to struggling U.S. auto makers. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee said the loans are needed to help auto makers build the next generation of cars and become financially stable. "Our auto companies are rising to the challenge of building the next generation of American cars, but are doing so in times when credit conditions cripple the funding for the facilities and technologies to take the steps to the future," McCain said in a...

At a town-hall event in New Mexico today, John McCain was asked about veterans' care, but the questioner added a provocative point at the end of her question. Take a look: (YouTube link) For those of you who can't watch clips online, a woman in the audience told the presumptive Republican nominee, "Senator McCain I truly hope you get the opportunity to chase Bin Laden right to the gates of hell and push him in as you stated on your forum. I do have a question though. Disabled veterans, especially in this state, have horrible conditions... I think it is...

A brother of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and local Democrats who backed her unsuccessful presidential campaign socialized privately Monday with a top surrogate of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain. The private gathering featured Carly Fiorina, Mr. McCain’s top economic adviser, and took place at the Dunmore home of political consultant Jamie Brazil, a longtime friend of Mrs. Clinton’s family who has signed on as paid national director of Mr. McCain’s Citizens for McCain Coalition. The attendees included Tony Rodham, Mrs. Clinton’s youngest sibling, his wife, Megan, and their two children; attorney Kathleen Granahan Kane, who...

It is no secret that many conservatives are already stretching and bending in order to accommodate the thought of voting for the man who opposed the Bush tax cuts, pushed for illegal immigrants’ amnesty and authored a campaign finance regulatory monster. But at this point, most conservatives seem to be on board. John McCain’s heroic stance on agricultural subsidies, free trade and earmarks, his history of valor, as well as the fact that his opponent is quite possibly the most incompetent candidate the Democrats have put forth in a century, all combine to compensate for McCain’s shortcomings. Just barely, however....

I saw a Republicans for Obama bumper sticker the other day and couldn't help laughing out loud. Republicans for Obama is an oxymoron. Oil and water, fire and ice. Impossible. Then I stumbled across a news article about this craze that featured two "Republicans" who are supporting the O Man. Former GOP Senator Lincoln Chaffee, who put down the bong long enough to vote for John Kerry in 2004, and Jim Leach, former Iowa Congressman who always looks concerned, have jumped on the Obama bandwagon. Neither man is a conservative, and both were voted out of office, so this isn't...

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has enjoyed strong support from a lobbyist group that backs the Kosovo Liberation Army despite allegations the KLA is a Muslim terrorist group with ties to criminal drug networks and al-Qaida. The Albanian American Civic League, or AACL, regards the KLA as "freedom fighters," said the AACL's president, former Republican congressman Joe DioGuardi of New York. They're "not terrorist, like the Serbs and Greeks say," DioGuardi insisted in an interview with WND. But Islam expert Robert Spencer, editor of the popular website Jihad Watch, contends radical Islam is the driving force behind the Kosovo...

Top conservative activist and leader of the Eagle Forum, Phyllis Schlafly — a legendary militant pro-lifer — reacted to John McCain's remark that former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge's pro-choice position would not rule him out as a vice presidential running mate by telling Newsmax, "I think [McCain] would be making a mistake." Schlafly was not alone in warning McCain against picking Ridge or any other pro-choice advocate as his running mate. Other top conservative leaders chimed in, showing that McCain, already getting only grudging support from the GOP’s right wing, might drive conservatives to desert his cause and torpedo his...

Republicans Grow More Hopeful About McCain By Jim Malone Washington 15 August 2008 Republicans who support Senator John McCain for president are growing increasingly confident that their candidate is gaining momentum in his race for the White House with the presumptive Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone reports from Washington. 2008 was supposed to be a Democratic year. Opinion polls have shown growing voter concerns about the U.S. economy, general unhappiness with President Bush and a desire for change. Despite those Democratic advantages, surveys also show the presidential race between Senators Obama and McCain to be...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain says that he's taking another look at the possibility of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, and as part of that assessment McCain says that he plans to talk to the nation's most prominent advocate of drilling in ANWR, Alaska governor Sarah Palin. McCain has opposed drilling in ANWR. In the past he's compared it to drilling in the Grand Canyon. But as energy prices climbed over the past several months, he has been careful to avoid locking himself into an anti-drilling position. In late June, McCain told voters in...

Commenting on John McCain's remark that Tom Ridge's pro-choice position would not rule him out as a vice presidential running mate, conservative leader and strongly pro-lifer Phyllis Schlafly got straight to the point by bluntly telling Newsmax, "I think [McCain] would be making a mistake." In a Newsmax report, McCain was quoted by The Weekly Standard as saying, “I think that the pro-life position is one of the important aspects or fundamentals of the Republican Party. And also I feel that — and I’m not trying to equivocate here — that Americans want us to work together. You know, Tom...

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s (Ariz.) latest television ad says that the country is in worse shape now than it was before President Bush began his second term. “Washington’s broken. John McCain knows it,” the ad says. “We’re worse off than we were four years ago.” The ad, titled “Broken,” shows that McCain is, at least in part, running away from President Bush’s record and looking to win favor with the centrist voters who have supported him in the past. The ad, which is slated to run in key states, comes after Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) made...

Up until now, I have been urging caution in (over)interpreting the results of the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls, which had shown the presidential race tightening to a near-tie in recent days. Although the tracking numbers are important sources of information, this trend had not really been reflected in much of the state polling, nor in other, one-off national polls. Today, however, we have a set of state polling out that does indicate some tightening in the race: (Table at link) The most interesting results are in Florida and Massachusetts. In Florida, SurveyUSA shows John McCain ahead by 6 points....

<p>Republican presidential candidate John McCain tried to strike a balance at a town hall meeting Tuesday between the independence he boasts of and his avowed conservatism.</p> <p>McCain also told a disabled woman that he would step up enforcement of the Americans With Disabilities Act and assured a self-described cancer survivor that he supported stem cell research.</p>

My former next-door neighbor Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review takes note of an apparent flip-flop by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on taxes. In March 2007 McCain told Ponnuru the following: Ponnuru: If you could get the Democrats to agree, or at least to come to the table on entitlements or on tax simplification, are those circumstances under which you’d be willing to accept a tax increase? Sen. McCain: No; no. PONNURU: No circumstances? Sen. McCain: No. None. None. But on This Week with George Stephanopoulos Sunday McCain sounded a bit different, saying of Social Security, "I am a supporter...

I have been in sackloth and ashes ever since the end of the Republican primary season dwelling on the mess we find ourselves in. Conservatives have watched the Republican nomination process get hijacked from them while they were debating whether our candidate should be socially conservative (Huckabee) vs economically conservative (Romney). Now we have McCain, who has historically proven to be mediocre at best on both sets of issues. His only strength was his view on the Iraq war. Now that we appear to have turned the corner in Iraq, the whole withdrawal argument may be moot. If things continue...

The original draft of John McCain’s speech at the Livestrong Summit Thursday evening made no mention of his own struggle with cancer. The text made a jab at Barack Obama, emphasized the need for improved health care and vowed to take on the tobacco industry — but excluded all references to the Arizona senator’s bout with melanoma.

In the rush to bulldoze the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac and housing bailout bill through Congress this week, scant attention has been paid in Washington to how the U.S. system fell into this hole. Thus it was refreshing to see Senator John McCain step up and speak rude truth to his colleagues about the fiasco in an op-ed piece this week. "Americans should be outraged at the latest sweetheart deal in Washington," the Republican presidential hopeful wrote in the St. Petersburg Times, stating the clear but all-too-often unspoken reality about this greatest of boondoggles. Yesterday 80 Senators voted to end debate...

...Poole’s analysis shows a fascinating and perhaps disturbing trend. Despite the perceptions of many in and out of the blogosphere and punditry, the parties have moved away from compromise, not towards it...

Neither did Glenn, neither did I. (I didn’t vote.) Granted, she’s a buffoon and a completely unreliable witness, but … do we maybe want to force ourselves to believe this one?"At a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election, I was talking to a man and his wife, both prominent Republicans. The conversation soon turned to the new president. “I didn’t vote for George Bush” the man confessed. “I didn’t either,” his wife added. Their names: John and Cindy McCain (Cindy told me she had cast a write-in vote for her husband). "The fact that this...

McCain Almost Left the GOP -- Twice March 24, 2008 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT Senator McCain has not wrapped up the Chuck Hagel endorsement yet, and I wanted to mention this to you. Hagel was on This Week with Stephanopoulos on Sunday, and Stephanopoulos said to him, "Senator McCain is a good friend of yours. Why haven't you endorsed him?" HAGEL: When I work for someone or commit to someone, I want to be behind that person in every way I can. I've obviously got some differences with John on the Iraq war. That's no secret. I want to understand a...

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain never fails to call himself a conservative Republican as he campaigns as his party’s presumptive presidential nominee. He often adds that he was a “foot soldier” in the Reagan revolution and that he believes in the bedrock conservative principles of small government, low taxes and the rights of the unborn. What Mr. McCain almost never mentions are two extraordinary moments in his political past that are at odds with the candidate of the present: His discussions in 2001 with Democrats about leaving the Republican Party, and his conversations in 2004 with Senator John Kerry about...

(The Politico) "The hot-button issue of immigration doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon – at least not in Republican circles. On NPR’s “Morning Edition” today, John McCain suggested that strong anti-immigrant rhetoric contributed to two recent, high-profile GOP Congressional losses – of former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who badly lost to Sen. Bob Casey in 2006, and Jim Oberweis, who lost the heavily Republican seat of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert this month in a special election.

Senator John McCain's lifetime rating of 82.3% from the American Conservative Union is often cited as proof that he is conservative. Here is a closer look at that 82.3 rating. First, a rating of 82.3% is not really that high. It puts Senator McCain in 39th place among senators serving in 2006, the latest year for which the ACU has its ratings posted online. For that most recent year in particular, McCain scored only 65, putting him in 47th place for that year. ... Generally, McCain has voted less conservatively in more recent years. ... So where did McCain differ...

John McCain, the all-but presumptive Republican nominee, told conservative activists this afternoon that he cannot win the presidency without "dedicated conservatives." "I know I have a responsibility to unite the party," he said. He acknowledegd that he has had differences with many conservatives but said he hopes they will see that he has the record of a true conservative. "I am proud to be a conservative," McCain said. ... McCain spoke to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington just hours after Mitt Romney used the same venue to announce he is suspending his presidential bid...

I know Free Republic members overwhelmingly don't want John McCain. He's not my choice.But I was just listening to Glenn Beck saying that Hilary Cinton will be better, that Bill Clinton's election in 1992 was the "best thing" that ever happened to America, that the country will be in such dire straights after four years of Hilary, that a "Churchill" will be needed to sort it out. This on top of Rush's statements and Coulter's.But folks, if Free Republic becomes the "Hilary will be better" site well I don't care if Barry Goldwater comes back and says it, that is...

Presidential hopeful drops campaign staff as Republican consultants predict he'll be gone by September THE former presidential front-runner, John McCain, may drop out of the 2008 race by September if his fundraising dries up and his poll ratings continue to drop, according to Republican insiders. The speculation, vigorously denied by McCain’s camp, is sweeping Republican circles after a disastrous few weeks in which the principled Arizona senator has clashed with the party’s conservative base on immigration and also alienated independent voters by backing President George W Bush’s troop surge in Iraq. (snip) One veteran Republican consultant put the odds of...

A mysterious $250,000 donation used to bankroll a political committee controlled by a potential candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, John Edwards, highlights a gap in federal laws requiring reporting of political contributions. In June, a closely held company gave a quarter of a million dollars to the One America Committee, a so-called 527 organization affiliated with Mr. Edwards, who became the Democrats' vice presidential nominee in 2004 after making a spirited but ultimately unsuccessful bid for the presidential nomination. A report that the committee filed with the Internal Revenue Service identified the donor as Oak Spring Farms,...

John McCain was expecting journalists to start slapping him around, and he hasn't been disappointed. As he gears up for a likely presidential campaign, the Arizona senator knows that reporters and columnists -- whom he jokingly described last year as "my base" -- have to prove their independence this time around. Media folks spent so much time riding on McCain's bus and listening to his rolling news conferences in the 2000 campaign that they were often mocked for swooning over the candidate. A media darling in the 2000 election, Sen. John McCain is no longer seen by the press as...

The political landscape may be shifting in ways that would make it easier for Sen. John McCain of Arizona to win the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. He's among several potential candidates courting Southern and Midwest Republicans this weekend in Memphis, Tenn., in the first chance that party insiders have had to look at several would-be nominees in one place. Conventional wisdom — that McCain could win the general election but not the Republican nomination because conservatives oppose him — may be changing. A convergence of three new forces could be reshaping the landscape just as Republicans begin deciding who will...

McCain: I 'Absolutely' Want to Be President Sen. John McCain says he "absolutely” wants to be president – but hasn’t yet decided if he’ll run in 2008. In a wide-ranging interview in the June edition of Men's Journal magazine, the Arizona Republican also reveals: John Kerry "discussed” the possibility of McCain running as his vice presidential candidate. U.S. troops could be in Iraq for another 50 years. Colin Powell will never run for office. Dan Rather was definitely fired over the Rathergate flap. In the interview, McCain – who has had prostate surgery and treatment for melanoma – said his...

WASHINGTON -- Arizona Sen. John McCain privately urged fellow Republicans Tuesday to compromise with Democrats over President Bush's stalled judicial nominees, but Majority Leader Bill Frist countered by asking which of the controversial appeals court candidates should be jettisoned as part of a deal, according to officials familiar with the meeting. With a Senate showdown looming, possibly as early as next week, Democratic leader Harry Reid challenged Frist to allow GOP senators to "follow their consciences" when voting on a streamlined procedure for certain judicial nominations. "Senators should be bound by Senate loyalty rather than party loyalty on a question...

WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain isn't running for president — yet. The wildly popular Republican senator yesterday said it's entirely too early to know if he'll run for the White House in 2008 — although "I do not foreclose the option." McCain, who would be 71 years old during a 2008 presidential run, said, "The best thing I can do is help the president with his agenda." McCain ticked off winning the war on terror and bringing the budget under control as the top issues — both Bush administration priorities that would polish McCain's already-dazzling national image should he...