Expect to Be Infuriated by John McCain

Via Maggie's Farm, check out Jules Crittenden, who puts the return of McCain derangement in perspective:

John Hawkins gets exercised over what we always knew about John McCain. He’s soft as an egg on illegal border crossing.

Put very simply: John McCain is a liar. He’s a man without honor, without integrity, who could not have captured the Republican nomination had he run on making comprehensive immigration a top priority of his administration. Quite frankly, this is little different from George Bush, Sr. breaking his “Read my lips, no new taxes pledge,” except that Bush’s father was at least smart enough to wait until he got elected before letting all of his supporters know that he was lying to them....

I genuinely regret having to do this because I do still believe the country would be better off with John McCain as President as opposed to Obama or Clinton. However, I just cannot in good conscience cast a vote for a man who has told this big of a lie, for this long, about this important of an issue.

Now Crittenden:

That’s too bad, because a withheld vote for McCain is a vote for Obama or Clinton. That’s a vote for a lot of other unpleasantness and lies, not to mention the abandonment of allies and a return to the wretched foreign policies of the Clinton and Carter administrations.

I’m trying to see where, in Hawkins’ excerpts, McCain previously repudiated his support for “comprehensive immigration reform” and where, in the last-straw remarks, he says he’s dumping border security. He addresses both in each of the quotes. The objection appears to be to McCain’s “but” that the “reform” part is a top priority as of Jan. 9, 2009. There is an apparent shift of emphasis in there. It’s debatable whether it rises to the level of lying, and an honor/integrity dump, but Hawkins apparently feels like he’s been personally lied to. Spend any significant amount of time in close proximity to a pol, it’s going to happen....

Maybe McCain wants his first 100 days to be marked by a repeat of the Kennedy-McCain-Bush immigration crash-and-burn. That’s what will happen if the next “comprehensive reform” isn’t significantly different from the last one, mutually despised on both sides of the aisle, and doesn’t include border security. Maybe he plans to kick it all off by alienating large blocks of the people who backed him, people he’ll need on many other issues. Could happen. He is a notoriously cranky maverick, after all.

Expect to be infuriated by McCain. It is going to happen. This has been, from the start, a hold-your-nose election. It is also, no matter who wins, very likely to be a one-term presidency, with the incumbent facing challenges from within his or her own party in 2012. The electorate, the candidates and the parties are too divided in too many directions, and none of the candidates look likely to manage a good patchup any time soon.

But I predict by the fall, we’ll see some people explaining why they’ve decided to vote for the people they swore they wouldn’t in the spring. Like this Boggfellow, who promises he’d vote for McCain before he’d vote for his treacherous erstwhile sweetheart Hill.

I like Crittenden's Machiavellian angle on politics, but frankly, I've have my run-ins with this "Boggfellow," and I seriously doubt he'd vote McCain.