John McCain's Sour Grapes Doctrine

The Politics of Hate and Revenge

I've been obsessing about John McCain lately - but only because he's such a vile, little man. You don't have to look very hard to see through McCain's thin skin into his black heart to recognize that holding a grudge is Johnny Maverick's forte.

I mean, seriously, what else is this guy good at? Foreign policy? Hardly. Just because you were a war hero doesn't make you an expert at all things foreign policy. Unless that sole policy position is war escalation no matter the circumstance. Rachel Maddow had a great piece on this earlier in the week, showing McCain's response to foreign affairs over the years. 

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But McCain's biggest flaw, of a myriad of flaws is that he is a sore loser. He ran for President in 2000 and after winning the New Hampshire primary, was attacked with a George W. Bush whisper campaign about fathering an illegitimate black child. That child happened to be McCain's adopted daughter from Bangladesh. After Bush won the nomination and eventually became President, John McCain adopted a policy of revenge. What I call his Sour Grapes Doctrine.

In hindsight, what looked like McCain opposing Bush policies and voting against them for what Democrats at the time assumed were the right reasons, it was all a matter of getting back at the dweeb who beat him in the 2000 primary, especially after those vicious smear tactics.

Steve Kornacki: "...McCain’s various self-reinventions as a politician are best understood as acts of sore loser-dom. A decade ago, for instance, he took up a sudden interest in closing the gun show loophole, enacting a patients’ bill of rights, and stopping tax cuts for the wealthy. Not at all coincidentally, this came just after he’d lost a bruising campaign against George W. Bush. Bush and his team had been rough – very, very rough – on McCain, and McCain had deemed them unworthy victors. His sudden cooperation with Democrats in 2001 was his version of payback, giving the new Bush White House fits."

Of course, that all ended with 9/11 and by 2004, McCain was ignoring the swiftboating of another war hero, John Kerry, while supporting the re-election of Dubya, complete with head-on-shoulder man hugs. And apparently being presented a birthday cake while a major US city drowned is all you need to let bygones be bygones. Sorry about that bastard black baby thing... Here's a cake!

Fast forward four quick years and this time John McCain wins the Republican nomination but botches the general election while singing "Bomb Iran, "picking The Hockey Mom From Wasilla as his unfortunate running mate, suspending his campaign to sit in on a financial Wall Street crisis meeting where he promptly adds nothing by keeping his mouth shut, and referring to his opponent as "that one" in a debate.

But since he's had so much practice at grudge politics, McCain tacks to the right and decides to become a thorn in President Obama's side as he did with Bush, to the point of not just accusing US Ambassador Susan Rice of being incompetent and "not very bright" by repeating intelligence reports given to her by the CIA which happened to be vague and still pending information (intelligence reports that McCain himself probably had a copy of),  but threatening to filibuster not only her possible nomination as the next Secretary of State, but ANY nomination President Obama would propose to succeed Hillary Clinton, because he wants answers on what happened in Benghazi. And he'll even miss classified briefings about what happened in Benghazi to hold a press conference to demand answers on what happened in Benghazi!

John McCain is a vindictive, curmudgeonly, sour little prick who can't get over the fact that he blew his chance. And now he's using his elected office to continue an obstructionist strategy, despite seeming more and more unhinged. If only he'd use his powers for good instead of pettiness.

ADDING... Here's Steve Kornacki's rant on The Cycle. It's worth watching if you can stomach S.E. Cupp... which is not an easy task.

Reid to McCain: Cut the Crap

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had some words for John McCain about his ongoing sour grapes. And he put them in a letter addressed to the Maverick, and CC'ed Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte because they are now being insufferable assholes on this Benghazi thing.

"I refuse to allow the Senate to be used as a venue for baseless partisan attacks... 

...You already have the opportunity to engage more fully in the fulsome and ongoing investigation in the events in Benghazi... [but] failed to attend a classified briefing held by the Senate Homeland Security Committee on this very issue."

In other words, you're making a fool of yourself. Knock it off, you idiot.

View the full letter here.

McCain Needs to Go Away

How much hate can one man hold against another? How bitter must a person be to look for any misguided excuse to fingerpoint and shake his fist in outrage despite making himself look like a complete loon in the process?

Arizona Senator and former 2008 losing Republican presidential candidate John McCain is still in stage two of the five stages of loss and grief: Anger. And since he doesn't have the balls to challenge the president directly, he'll hypocritically go after UN Ambassador Susan Rice for expressing CIA intelligence at the time almost verbatim in regards to the Benghazi embassy attack.

But no matter. McCain can keep tilting at windmills along with his personal Sancho Panza, Sen. Lindsey Graham, about the Benghazi attack and claim a coverup or incompetence in this instance, but defend then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in her "mushroom cloud" assessment because that's what the intelligence assessment said at the time. Why is that explanation good enough for Condoleezza Rice when it then had a direct result of taking the country into war on false pretenses, but not good enough for Susan Rice who had no direct involvement with the State Department and whose statements were consistent with CIA intelligence at the time? Oh right, it's okay if you're a Republican.

John McCain needs to go away. His mind is muddled with anger and revenge, never getting over 2008's loss. If he were so interested in the actual information about what happened in the Libyan embassy attack and the intelligence leading up to Benghazi on September 11th, he should have attended the classified briefing for members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, of which he is a member, instead of holding a photo op press conference demanding information that was being disseminated in said meeting simultaneously, and calling for another investigation, also known as another witch hunt.

 Reporters would do well to skip McCain's pressers from now on, else they'll risk missing actual news.

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Posted by JHW22 (Filling in for Broadway Carl)





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