Somebody Remind John McCain That He Lost in 2008
This morning, I thought it might be fun to start with a little guessing game: I call it Identify the Bitter Old Senatorial Bloviator. Let’s go!
Guess who said this, and when:
__________________ is a great American success story. This is what America is all about. A young woman who grew up in a segregated part of America where Americans were not treated equally, to rise to the position of secretary of state. We should have been celebrating, I believe, this remarkable American success story.
Also, I thought that some of the remarks — and I’m not going to mention my colleagues’ names — some of the remarks aimed at her during the hearings challenged her integrity. We can disagree on policy and we disagree on a lot of things, but I think it is very clear that _______________ is a person of integrity. And yes, I see this, some lingering bitterness over a very tough campaign. I hope it dissipates soon.
I can only conclude we’re doing this for no other reason than because of lingering bitterness at the outcome of the elections.
If you guessed Sen. John McCain, “Bingo!” That was Senator McCain waxing all “America, Land of Opportunity” over the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice back in 2005. McCain seemed quite impressed with the other Rice’s indisputable “integrity” despite the fact that, as National Security Advisor to George W. Bush, she lied through her teeth about Saddam Hussein’s WMDS, resulting in the deaths of thousands of American troops and countless Iraqi civilians over ten years in Iraq.
In light of those glowing accolades, as opposed to Sen. McCain’s current character assassination of Susan Rice, I can only conclude that he’s doing this for no other reason than because of lingering bitterness at the outcome of the elections.
Here’s another one—who said this and when?
We need an ambassador who has the trust of the president and the secretary of State . . . elections have consequences, and one consequence of President ________ re-election is that he has the right to appoint officials of his choice.
A president has a right to put into place the team that he believes will serve him best.
Wow! that McCain has a silver tongue, doesn’t he? That was 2005 again, when McCain spoke up for Dubya’s nomination of John Bolton for Ambassador to the UN. At the time, Bolton’s opponents said he was unfit for the job because, among other things, he allegedly tried to get a State Department analyst to change an intelligence finding to support his own world view. But John McCain said “Fiddlesticks!”
Of course, McCain has had a terrible decade: he was beaten by a landslide by a black man who refuses to kiss McCain’s ring. The little trolls in McCain’s head keep telling him “It should be ME! in that Oval Office, and commanding SEAL teams from the SitRoom! And I have to stomach this “uppity pretender” strutting his stuff and being Friended all over FaceBook and, and IT. SHOULD. BE. ME! (and Caribou Barbie) running things.
If you think “hell hath no fury like a Senate Minority Leader scorned,” wait’ll you see how long McCain can hold his breath.
As Charles Pierce, of Esquire, so poetically put it:
Yes, because when you’re as concerned as McCain assures us he is that the foreign policy of the United States is coming unraveled, the best patriotic solution is to work as hard as you can to keep the State Department leaderless until the fires of your personal tantrum cool. It’s hard to believe Hank Paulson didn’t listen to him back in 2008.
It is eating Republicans alive that Benghazi didn’t “Watergate” Obama. They have lost the presidential election, some of their heft in the House (202 Democrats - 234 Republicans), the fever dream of a Senate majority and a lot of their credibility as the go-to party for national security matters.
Now that Romeo Petraeus has testified and the whole Susan Rice incident is quickly shriveling up into a nothingness, Republicans are doing their version of political strategizing to keep the story alive (despite the fact that events in the Mid-East keep stealing their news cycles).
Now McCain is demanding a public apology from Susan Rice to the American people for misleading them (ahhh! the Irony) and 97 House Republicans have signed a letter saying, among lots of other derogatory BS, that Rice is “widely viewed” as incompetent or dishonest, not only at home but “around the world.”
Notice that more than half of House Republicans figure they have better things to do, especially since the House has no role in confirming presidential nominees.
As Michael Crowley, of Time Magazine’s “Swampland” blog points out:
Whether Rice would fail to win a hearing at, say, the Saudi king’s palace because of this one trip around the talk show circuit is hard enough to swallow. But when you think about it, the letter also entails a certain chutzpah. If being “widely viewed” as incompetent or dishonest is such a problem, shouldn’t most of the people who signed that letter, being members of Congress and all, themselves be out of a job?
But, in politics, there’s always a hidden agenda, isn’t there? The hidden agenda here is that Republicans are guessing that if Obama doesn’t want to go through one of their signature fili-blustery confirmation hearings, he would nominate John Kerry (D-Mass), who would most likely cruise unimpeded into the SoS position. BUT—that would mean vacating his Senate seat, setting up a special election for a Massachussetts senate seat that Scott Brown would almost certainly run for and win thus diminishing Democratic power in the Senate at a time when each of those seats were hard-won.
There you have it, business as usual. Obviously, the GOP would rather lumber into a tar pit than change anything about their winning ways. Meanwhile, if you care about Susan Rice’s career, hop on over to whitehouse.gov where I’ve put up a petition calling for John McCain to issue a public apology to her for defaming her character.
Posted by Bette Noir on 11/20/12 at 09:48 AM • Permalink
Categories: Politics • Barack Obama • BushCo • Nutters •
Share this post: 
