Tuesday, April 6, 2010

New Non-Maverick McCain running for U.S. Senate

Politico interviewed JD Hayworth about McCain's flip-flopping on calling himself a maverick. Some excerpts -


Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) told POLITICO on Monday that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is trying to “encourage amnesia” by claiming that he never considered himself to be a “maverick.”

Hayworth was responding to a quote in a Newsweek story in which McCain — who embraced the “maverick” label during his presidential run — said: “I never considered myself a maverick. ... I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.”

In a telephone interview with POLITICO, Hayworth said that the four-term senator whom he is challenging in the Republican primary is “developing some instant revisionism.”

“It’s a word that has been expunged from his vocabulary,” Hayworth said. “If memory serves, his campaign plane was called ‘Maverick One,’ and, as I understand it, in national campaigns they spend a lot of time on that stuff.”

“If you’re scoring at home, how many reversals is this?” Hayworth added, running through what he sees as a litany of McCain position changes. “He’s moving away from legislative reversals into branding reversals. It’s the new John McCain, nonmaverick edition, for the Arizona Senate election.”

“You’re seeing a lot of scrambling and a lot of position reversals and panicked and shrill attacks against me,” Hayworth said. “To the extent that he can encourage amnesia in the electorate, that’s what he’s aiming to do.”

Hayworth also took issue with a quote in the article from former GOP state Attorney General Grant Woods — a McCain supporter — who said of Hayworth, “Someone needs to drive a wooden stake through this guy’s heart.”

“This cavalier death threat that he issued is over the top,” Hayworth said.
“If Grant Woods had a shred of decency he would apologize for what amounts to a death threat,” he said. “For Mr. Woods to issue a death threat in a national magazine like Newsweek is way beyond the pale.”

Read the rest of the article at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35409.html#ixzz0kKe4XAw2

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yep, senility has set in on our Senator McCain. Rebranding at this late date can only mean desperation. Such abstractions are not what conservatives need, we need stable leadership, not chameleons. JD Hayworth seems to say what he means, and mean what he says.