Note to McCain Campaign: DeWine is a Liberal
Published February 20th, 2008 @ 9:09 am. Tags: 2008, dewine, mccain, republican primary
Last night, I stopped by the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Columbus to see John McCain speak and watch the election results from Wisconsin. The room was too packed (mostly with job-seeking sycophants and rent-seekers) so all of the pictures I took didn’t turn out well, but you can watch some video of his speech here. He used his speech to attack B. Hussein Obama, and said, “I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change.”
McCain made no effort to reach out to those conservatives who have serious questions about his record, nor should he. I will not support McCain because of the long career he has spent in office poking his finger in the eyes of conservatives, but John is 71 years old and has no reason to change now.
But can someone in the McCain campaign please tell me, WHY BRING FORMER SENATOR MIKE DEWINE ON STAGE TO STAND WITH JOHN? And why are you campaigning with Mike today in a number of cities? Is the way to rally your campaign to victory is to bring a loser on stage who lost to a hard-left mercantilist named Sherrod Brown? DeWine was part of McCain’s “Gang of 14″ and was one of 2 Republican Senators to vote against protecting gun manufactures against frivolous lawsuits. DeWine, with an F rating from the NRA was rated as one of the “Top 10 Anti-Gun Senators” by Human Events, and was proud of his endorsement from the Brady Campaign (formerly “Handgun Control, Inc. which anti-gun Ohio Lt. Governor Lee Fisher was a board member of).
DeWine is so irritating to the Republican base that he had two no-name primary challengers, and one of them won MULTIPLE endorsements from county Republican parties (see here and here).
I probably wasn’t the only Republican last night to see DeWine up on stage and imagine a President McCain appointing him as Attorney General. Considering the important 2nd Amendment case coming before the Supreme Court, that is hardly a comforting thought.
An even scarier thought is the thought of Supreme Court Justice Mike DeWine.
McCain, DeWine and the rest of the Gang were able to usher all but I believe 2 of the Bush nominees through the U.S. Senate. I guess it is easier to criticize than look at the outcome of having strong conservatives on the court.
here we go with a rehash of the blackwell/petro debacle. stay home and get obama for president - you freakin knucklehead! wtf? don’t be an a**hole! suck up your stupid false pride and vote for the candidate who is the lesser of the two available evils. use your God given common sense and stop whinin about something that cannot be changed. i’m no mccain fan either, i’d rather have seen thompson, huckabee or even giuliani win the nomination. but they’re not gonna win, so we come in behind our nominee. stop sabotaging our chance to have at least a RINO in office. a RINO is better than a freaking left wing, wealth redistributing, tax and spend liberal.
Mike,
McCain is far from a RINO. Chafee? Sure. Snowe and Collins? Yeah.
But if you really think that, then you’re letting your irrational hatred blind you.
you’re right. they have bigger tusks on their face than mccain does. snowe and collins are definitely more liberal because they have to be in order to get elected in the left leaning states from which they hail (ala romney). chafee isn’t even a republican anymore last i checked. didn’t he leave the party and go independent? i don’t hate anyone. i’m just saying that mccain is much more liberal on some issues than i’d like him to be - the main issue being immigration. as you will recall during the 1996 presidential campaign pat buchanan uttered the most prophetic comments of any politician that i can think of in my lifetime: “if we don’t institute a temporary moratorium on immigration, shut down these borders and take inventory of those who are already here there will be a terrorist attack of catastrophic proportions on american soil within the next five years.” five years later? sept 11, 2001. i’m paraphrasing, but you can check out the authenticity of the comment if you’d like. i don’t hate either obama or mccain. the “hater” label is always used by liberals in order to dismiss and marginalize the opinions of those with whom they disagree. needless to say, i voted for buchanan in 96 in the primary and then dole in the general. i didn’t stay home after my preferred candidate didn’t win. you know what i’m saying and you know that i’m not an “irrational hater.” hurling such insults only serves to undermine your own credibility. maybe that’s why you’re an “outcast.”
You called him a RINO when looking at his record as a whole makes that accusation unjustified. However, describing your views as an ‘irrational hatred’ may have been a little strong but that is because that whole RINO thing reminds me of Hannity, Coulter, and Malkin and other idiots (not saying you’re one) and irked me.
Regardless, I’m glad to see that McCain may not be your guy but you’ll vote for him. More folks need to be like you in that regard.
it’s all relative. how about “moderate” republican. that better? the point (and the reason for my frustration) is that when we start threatening to sit it out after our preferred candidate doesn’t prevail in the primary, we are just hurting our own cause. the secondary point is that true blue conservatives like buchanan routinely get dismissed as “right-wing extremists” by the liberals, the main stream media and some of the more “moderate” republicans. it is obvious to me from the vision that buchanan showed back in 1996 that those who share his ideological beliefs are best prepared to lead this nation. history doesn’t lie. sounds like even rush is beginning to come around now in the aftermath of the n.y. times debacle. time for everyone else to fall in line and push mccain into the whitehouse. on that, we agree. he’ll need someone who is very likable to be his running mate. considering the treatment that the republicans get from the media, it’s hard to determine who that may be. i wonder if colin powell or norman schwartzkopf would be interested. i heard condoleeza rice isn’t interested. jeb bush or mel martinez may be a good options. doesn’t really matter as long as we win. i think ann coulter threatening to vote for hillary is a ruse in order to ensure her loss in the democratic primary because obama will look like a lightweight compared to mccain in the general. just my thought.
I agree that McCain needs a home run for a VP pick. However, I have heard that Powell may endorse Obama. As for Martinez, he was born in Cuba and can’t be President. What about J.C. Watts?
Another comment on the Gang of 14. If an agreement on judges was not reached, the GOP would have changed Senate rules and eliminated the filabuster. While that would have provided short term gain, it would be a disaster with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic President. Just think of the socialists that Obama or Hillary would nominate that would sale through without the protection of the filibuster for the GOP minority.
I like JC Watts, but he has been out of the spotlight for years. Also, there are other people with better resumes and accomplishments than Watts.
Pawlenty
Chris Cox
Rob Portman
Just to name a few.
As of 2005, DeWine had a lifetime ACU rating of 80. McCain had a 2005 lifetime rating of 83.
Richard Shelby, Ted Stevens, Lisa Murkowski, Dick Lugar, Judd Gregg, Pete Domenici, George Voinovich, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter, and Gordon Smith all have lower lifetime ACU ratings than DeWine. And several GOP Senators were right around DeWine: John Warner, Kit Bond, Thad Cochran, and Chuck Grassley.
So yeah, the blind assertion that DeWine is a liberal is absurd.
Dewine with a rating of 80 from ACU? How about the last 10 years of his senatorial life where he transformed into a liberal. Probably would get about a 30 rating. Only thing he was consistent with us was on taxes.
Worst thing McCain could have ever done was put that jacka_s in the spotlight as part of his campaign. Running it in Ohio no less. Just when I was beginning to resolve myself to McCain I had to see Dewine’s puss on the tube. Who is going to appeal to us next, Rinovich?
How many times do I have to say it? Mike DeWine wants to be either the VP with McCain or the next AG in Washington D.C.. So if you people out in the Republican party in the U.S.A. think your getting a constitutional conservative, think otherwise.