Just what was it about John McCain that liberals loved so much? Was it because he ran against the Republican Party base in 2000? The way columnist E.J. Dionne remembers it:
He spoke out too forcefully in 2000 for campaign finance reform and against "the demands of big-money special interests." He condemned the "self-appointed" leaders of conservative groups — a rather influential constituency — and singled out Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "the agents of intolerance."
Really? McCain is against big-money special interests? No kidding! First I’ve heard of it. I imagine that he’d also be against incumbent protection acts.
Yet everything that “right-wingers” loathed about McCain is “what his party most needs now.”
His reform enthusiasms stand as the perfect antidote to the corruption of the past Republican Congress.
It’s telling, isn’t it. Dionne’s idea of a good Republican is one that would make the party take its medicine.
But Dionne has got it wrong. We folk in the Republican base don’t like McCain because we don’t like his truckling to the liberal media. We don’t like his attack on the First Amendment. We don’t like his corporative approach to commerce. We don’t like his government-comes-first approach to tax cuts.
And we don’t like him joining the liberal linebackers piling onto Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
The liberal half of this nation has a serious problem with anti-religious bigotry. The last thing the nation needs is presidential candidates taking pot-shots at religious leaders—even if many of them are just as flawed as our political leaders.
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