Puff Explains It All

Former Senate Donk Leader Tom Daschle gives Republican voters pretty much everything they need to know about their party's so-called nominee - almost:

Former Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle said that several years ago John McCain came close to leaving the Republican Party and caucusing with Senate Democrats.

During Daschle’s appearance Sunday on MSNBC’s Meet the Press, host Tim Russert noted that Daschle said in February, “It’s true that we were once close to bringing John McCain into the Democratic caucus. There are many who can verify that.” Russert asked, “John McCain almost became a Democrat?”

Daschle answered: “Never a Democrat, but an independent. He was so angry at the way he was treated and the problems he had with the Bush Administration in 2001, Tim, that he came to us and said, ‘Look, I’m seriously considering becoming an independent and caucusing with you. Let’s talk about it.’ And we did.”

“Aligning himself with the Democrats in the Senate?” Russert asked.

“Exactly,” Daschle replied.

"The way he was treated" meaning losing the 2000 GOP nomination to Dubya fair and square.  When he's trying to win, McCain is a notorious sore loser, all the moreso when he loses to somebody for whom he harbors galloping contempt.  George W. Bush obviously fell within that category for Lord Queeg (not unlike Mitt Romney did this time), like he does for most everybody else on the Left.

And there we come to the other cause of Maverick's grudge.  Having "evolved" in office following the Keating Five scandal into a born-again "reformer," McCain was on a mission to rip the GOP away from the "Extreme Right" - embodied in his mind by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell - and restore it to the Rockefeller/Blue Nose/RINO winglet of the party.  His mistake was to be so belligerently open about it; the open hostility Sailor radiated toward Christian evangelicals (at the urging of notorious RINO and former New Hampshire Senator Warren Rudman) stampeded the bulk of the Republican base straight into Bush the son's camp, and he never looked back. 

The "problem" McCain had with his own party was that he felt entitled to its presidential nomination and GOPers denied it to him.  Thus did that flaming resentment have him on the brink of an honest defection.

But something stopped him.  Something held him back.  Whether it was an epiphany within himself, or somebody gave him some "political facts of life" advice, John Sith McCain realized that he wanted to be president more than he wanted sabotage his own party.  And he would never get that chance if pulled a Jeffords.

But that was only part of the V-8 moment.  What if he could accomplish both at the same time?  What if he could be an "enemy within," a "deep cover agent" for the Dems sabotaging the GOP agenda from within the Republican caucus?  Being a prominent dissident would give him far more influence and notoriety than the afforementioned Jim Jeffords ever got as a back-bencher in the Dem caucus.  He could exact his revenge on the frat boy who denied him what was rightfully his and the party that had spurned him on a daily basis for the ensuing eight years.  The Enemy Media would absolutely swoon over him.  And when 2008 rolled around, it would be "his turn" at the Republican presidential nomination despite all of that treachery.  Proving once and for all that remaining in the "Stupid Party" does have some advantages after all.

Darth Queeg was born.  And now all has proceeded as he foresaw - except, perhaps, actually winning the presidency itself.

Which would explain this:

Russert asked Daschle, who is an adviser to the Barack Obama campaign, “Then how can you run against [McCain] as a Bush third term?”

Daschle responded: “Because in the course of that period from 2001 to 2008 . . . he’s become a very ideologic advocate for the Bush policies on Iraq, on the economy, on tax policy, on domestic policy. Across the board he is espousing the Bush policies. He’s changed a lot since 2001.”

“Why?” Russert queried.

“Well, I think because he felt he needed to do that to win the nomination,” was Daschle’s response.

And to have a prayer of bilking the GOP base into supporting him in November.

But you just wait; if, somehow, some way, John Sith McCain does pull off the mother of all upsets, he'll be a bigger "maverick" in the Oval Office than he EVER was in the United States Senate.  And we, conservatives, will have been noodleheaded enough to put him there.

Don't say you were never warned.  Senator Daschle and I don't get to do these PSAs very often, ya know.

UPDATE: McCain "senior advisor" Steve Schmidt on CNN yesterday:

Senator Obama's fond of saying that John McCain represents a third term for George W. Bush.  The reality is that Senator McCain has disagreed on issue after issue with President Bush over the last eight years.  He is his own man.

Yeah, Steve?  Well guess what?  So has, and is, Obama.  So why the hell should anybody - especially any Republican - vote for your boss?