Doug MacEachern on Jesse Kelly: "A really, really angry guy."
The Arizona Republic’s Doug MacEachern comes to not bury Little Benny Quayle, but to praise him.
MacEachern’s argument: Quayle’s not a complete sociopath, like the guy the GOP nominated to run against Gabrielle Giffords in the eighth Congressional District.
(The district includes most of Tucson and extends to cover the southeast corner of the state.)
Jesse Kelly is a rabid former marine who unexpectedly knocked out establishment candidate Jonathan Paton, making life considerably easier for Giffords in a tough re-election campaign.
Kelly visited the Republic’s editorial board the other day, and in MacEachern’s telling he had a lot to say:
I met Kelly in an Editorial Board meeting. Honorable fellow: war veteran, like all the district’s GOP candidates. Indeed, he was a Marine combat platoon leader, the most dangerous job on earth. He is an honest conservative. And a really, really angry guy.
When asked about priorities, he gave an answer that, while perfectly suitable for a former Marine officer, it seemed a bit over the top for a prospective member of Congress: “We’ve got to kill all members of radical Islam.”
And, when asked if he could work with Democrats in Congress: “I hope there’s no Democrats left in Congress when I get there.”
Look, I like shock theater, too. And I’ve been known to be a bit edgy at times. But Kelly is that rare conservative who takes politics so personally that he has morphed into his worst enemy. Like far-left liberals, he doesn’t believe his political opponents are merely wrong; they’re evil: “I think liberals are destroying the nation. We had better go fight them in Washington before they destroy our children’s future.”
About Quayle, MacEachern continues the Republic’s odd insistence on mentioning at least once a day the scandal it did not tell readers about during the primary campaign, namely Quayle’s cheesy past writing for an ultraskanky Scottsdale nightlife web site.
That sordid tale is told in its entirety here.
PHXated’s complete Ben Quayle archive is here.
7:46 AM
Little Benny Quayle on Greta Van Susteren
He proposes that Congress’s salaries be cut if it doesn’t reduce the budget.
“They have these incentives in the private sector and they work very well,” he says, insipidly.
Van Susteren, clearly skeptical, does her best to pin him down on the Dirty Scottsdale scandal.
Quayle has yet to answer any question about his involvement with the site clearly.
10:42 PM
What exactly does Ben Quayle's wife do?
From Young Benny Quayle’s campaign web site:
Ben is married to Tiffany Crane Quayle, an Arizona State University graduate. Tiffany manages Insight Enterprises (an Arizona based Fortune 500 company) for CA and is very active in the Phoenix Women’s Board of the Steele Children’s Research Center.
Now, the bio caught our eye because it’s odd to say someone “manages” a Fortune 500 company. It’s not really a business term on that level.
You “manage” a 7-11.
Fortune 500 companies have directors, or CEOs, or vice presidents, right?
And what does it mean to say someone manages a company for “CA”? She lives in Arizona, right? Does she work in California? Could she head up Insight’s California office, maybe?
And what in the hell is Insight Enterprises?
Turns out it’s not precisely on the Fortune 500, but whatever.
Here’s the company’s corporate profile:
Insight Enterprises, Inc. (Insight) is a provider of information technology (IT) hardware, software and services to small, medium and large businesses and public sector institutions in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific.
Sounds pretty important.
Odd, though, that someone who “manages” a “Fortune 500 company” has such a small internet footprint. You don’t find much info on the internets about Tiffany Crane Quayle.
It takes some prowling around before you discover something interesting.
Tiffany Quayle doesn’t work for Insight Enterprises.
She works for a company that until recently was called Computer Associates and is now called …
… CA.
Here’s its profile:
CA, Inc. (CA) is an independent enterprise information technology (IT) software and service company with capabilities across IT environments from mainframe and physical to virtual and cloud. CA develops and delivers software and services that help organizations to manage and secure their IT infrastructures and deliver flexible IT services. CA addresses most of the components of the computing environment, including people, information, processes, systems, networks, applications and databases, regardless of the hardware or software customers are using. It has a portfolio of software products that address its customers' needs, with a specific focus on service management and assurance, project and portfolio management and security (identity and access management). It delivers its products on-premise, or for certain products, via software-as-a-service
Basically, CA does outsourced computer software sales for Insight, in the same way another company might do its catering, or landscaping.
Here’s what Quayle herself says she does on LinkedIn:
I actually left CA (and the world of the “big corporation”) to work for a small start up in the bay area…which was an unbelievable learning experience. It also lead me to a unique opportunity to work for VMware. I would have stayed at VMware for years if CA hadn’t recruited me back for a channel sales position. Now that I’m in sales, I know it’s where I’m going to stay.
Tiffany Quayle’s Specialties:
IT Sales & Marketing – specifically in the channel…even more specifically, on the LAR side of the channel.
If you bring coffee in to Steve Jobs' office, you don’t “manage Apple, a Fortune 500 company, for Starbucks.”
You’re a barista.
PHXated has a friend in Chicago who works for AT&T. One of his clients is Walgreens. He doesn’t “manage Walgreens, a Fortune 500 company.”
He just sells them phones. (It’s a little more complicated than that, but still.)
What does Tiffany Quayle do? She sells computer software, basically making sure Insight is up to date on its Microsoft Office licenses.
It’s a little more complicated than that, but still.
For free, PHXated offers this quick resume rewrite for the distaff Quayle:
“Tiffany Crane Quayle does corporate computer software sales for CA, formerly Computer Associates. Her client in Arizona is Insight Enterprises, a Fortune 1000 company.”
The complete PHXated Ben Quayle archive.
8:57 AM
Ben Quayle cancelled his own victory party
From Politico:
After a cascade of accusations and ever-shifting denials that he wrote for a raunchy website under the name of a fictional porn star, it seemed even Ben Quayle thought he was going to lose a 10-way Republican primary in Arizona.
Quayle, the son of former Vice President Dan Quayle, went so far as to cancel a victory party he had planned to hold Tuesday night to watch the returns in the race for the GOP nod to replace retiring Rep. John Shadegg in the 3rd District.
6:34 AM
Andrew Thomas Agonistes
From the Republic, reporting that Tom Horne how has a 373-vote lead over Andrew Thomas, enough to avoid a recount:
First, Thomas delivered an all-but-victory speech at Republican Party headquarters, while a dejected Horne told TV crews that low turnout had likely cost him the election.
Then Horne roared back, erasing a deficit of some 9,000 votes as ballots were counted in Pima County and elsewhere. Thomas' spokesman, Jason Rose, appeared to concede the race to Horne in a series of tweets, urging Republicans to come together behind their new standard bearer.
Wednesday morning, in a statement released through Rose, Thomas appeared to pedal back from those words.
“The time for debating and tough words in the Republican primary is over,” Thomas said. “The time for vote counting is upon us. I appreciated Tom Horne’s words earlier in the campaign and just last night when things were not looking his way that he would support me were I to be the nominee. Likewise, if Tom prevails I don’t want there to be any doubt that I will support him against the Democrat. Let’s see where the vote counting takes us.”
Read more here.
10:46 AM
It's primary day
Remember, what can help Arizona most is moderates who can improve the state’s standing nationally … and help bring in the federal dollars that pork disdainers like McCain and Shadegg have not.
Accordingly, the people to root for today are the weakest, dumbest and most politically wounded candidates in the various Republican primaries; they will be most vulnerable in the fall, right?
In other words, go Ben Quayle!
McCain — a bad senator, a bad person, and a bad man — seems safe from challenger J.D. Hayworth, who would have been fun to have on the ballot in November.
But there are some interesting Congressional races as well, notably the one for the retiring Shadegg’s seat, which came to national attention after Quayle’s cheesy past as a writer for a skanky web site came to light.
Again, PHXated hopes Quayle wins today, but has generously extended a blogging invitation to Quayle should he be unemployed tomorrow. The search for Scottsdale’s Foxiest Chick has just begun!
Here’s Politico’s analysis of the Gabrielle Giffords race:
The 8th District — a vast expanse that stretches south and east from Tucson, through Sierra Vista and Tombstone, all the way to a corner border with Mexico and New Mexico — provides an ideal test case to understand the degree to which national political forces might sweep aside even a polished incumbent who has steeled herself for the onslaught by paying close attention to state and local matters.
“She’s done everything she needs to do. If she loses, it would be one of those cases where it doesn’t matter how much you spent, it doesn’t matter what you do,” said Rodolfo Espino, a political science professor at Arizona State University.
Here particularly, Giffords' position will be more secure if a nut named Jesse Kelly wins the GOP primary for the seat. Politico:
Conventional political wisdom holds that candidates like him can’t attract enough support in a general election-when the electorate is considerably broader and more diverse-but Kelly seems determined to test the proposition anyway.
In a district in which nearly 17 percent of the population was 65 years old or older at the time of the last census, Kelly wants to phase out Social Security — going a step further than the plan in Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisc.) “Roadmap” that he also endorses.
Here’s 538.com’s analyses of the races:
AZ’s crowded Republican House primaries feature three contests in districts where GOPers think they have a chance of beating incumbent Democrats, and one for an open Republican seat.
The race that’s attracted the most national attention is probably in AZ-08, a Tucson-based district represented by two-term Democrat Gabby Giffords. A classic Establishment-Tea Party matchup involving former state senator Jonathan Paton, the early frontrunner, and Tea Party activist Jesse Kelley, is considered very close. Giffords is a veteran of two close races, and is building up her campaign treasury as Republicans squabble, but her opposition to the new AZ immigration law and votes for key Obama legislation have made her appear vulnerable.
In Phoenix-suburban AZ-03, where Republican John Shadegg is retiring, the early frontrunner was Ben Quayle, son of the former Veep from Indiana, but he is fighting to hold off self-funder Steve Moak. It’s been a battle of self-inflicted wounds, with Quayle hurt by association with an off-color internet site (to which he occasionally made posts under a pseudonym inspired by a porn-star character in Boogie Nights), and Moak battling claims of conflicts of interest between non-profit and for-profit businesses.
In AZ-05, another Phoenix-area district, former Maricopa County Treasurer David Schweikert is so confident of victory that he’s saving money for a general election against Democratic incumbent Harry Mitchell, but businessman Jim Ward remains financially competitive down the stretch.
And in the huge, largely rural AZ-01, dentist Paul Gosar is in a close race with 2008 nominee Sydney Hay for the right to take on freshman Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick. The incumbent beat Hay by a 56-40 margin two years ago.
… and, for variety’s sake, a sample from Greg Patterson’s:
CD 3
Conventional wisdom is that Quayle was the favorite, but self destructed with his handling of the Dirty Scottsdale revelations. That means that Moak is likely to take the race—assuming that Quayle self destructed early enough.
I think the candidate to watch is Waring. He’s represented the district for many years and he walks door to door every weekend. Remember that the race has 10 candidates and at least 7 of them are credible. So you can win with a really low vote count. CD 3 is actually looking like a large scale legislative race. That means that Waring’s shoe leather is likely to offset Moak’s money.
6:30 AM
Politico looks at the "heavy cost" of McCain's re-election
Or re-nomination, at least:
[I]t’s been a costly road to a 5th term for the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, and the experience is likely to leave a lasting and unsightly stain on his legacy.
It’s not just the $20 million he’s spent already this election or the scorched earth campaign that he’s run. Rather, it’s the choices he’s made and the positions he’s embraced—-and what it reveals about him—-that could make for a complicated final chapter in his political biography.
[…]
A former McCain aide, who asked not to be identified, said it’s an open question which shade of McCain the Senate would see upon his return and acknowledged the repositioning might affect how he’s remembered.
“This could be a definition for his legacy,” he said. “From 1997 to 2006, that’s a different legacy.”
PHXated’s “The Case Against John McCain” is here.
6:59 AM
Confidential to Ben Quayle: On Wednesday, give us a call!
Your big primary is Tuesday. You might be the GOP nominee in the race to replace John Shadegg in Arizona’s 3rd congressional district.
We have to be honest. We hope you win.
The primary, that is.
Last week it was revealed you used to hell around Scottsdale with the guy who founded Dirty Scottsdale.com, a skanky nightlife web site now morphed into The Dirty.com.
You used to write for the site under the name Brock Landers, a man embarked on an epic quest for Scottsdale’s hottest foxiest chick or somesuch, while all around you the site posted porny photos of club denizens with a lot of speculation about venereal diseases.
A classy operation!
This was two or three years ago.
Now all of a sudden you’re a family values Republican who borrows other peoples' kids so you look like a family man.
Anyway, like we said we hope you win, because you’d be vulnerable in the general.
But, here’s the deal.
The Dirty.com has really taken off. You seem to be a web guy with a magic touch.
And be honest: Is the search for Scottsdale’s hottest chick really over?
We think you’re the guy who can help find her—and help PHXated find its groove.
So, like we said, we hope you win on Tuesday.
But if not .. on Wednesday, drop us a line!
The complete Ben Quayle story is here.
5:01 PM
The complete Ben Quayle/Brock Landers links list!
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a wee little web site, Dirty Scottsdale.
On the site, folks sent in pics of marginal nightlife people, to which was paired commentary distinguished as much by its grammatical uncertainty as its utterly skanky content—generally asseverations about venereal disease and the like.
One of its early noted contributors was a guy named Brock Landers.
Landers was a man on a mission, namely to find Scottsdale’s First Foxy Chick.
This was in 2007.
Flash forward three years. Dirty Scottsdale is now a network of sites, all published under the name of The Dirty.
And meanwhile, a young man named Little Benny Quayle decides to run for Congress. This is a venue open to him if not too many other folks of his fairly undistinguished life work because he happens to be the son of a former vice president of the United States.
All is going well (well, fairly well), until a bombshell drops in a story on a national political web site.
The story says young Quayle had been a writer for Dirty Scotsdale, under the name “Brock.”
In the story, Quayle denied that it was he!
Politico: Quayle denies link to Scottsdale site
“I was not involved in the site,” Quayle said.
But the story quoted the site’s founder, Nik Richie, who would seem to have been in a position to know, saying that Quayle had posted eight to ten times on the blog.
Soon, he weighed in with his version of events on The Dirty.
The Dirty: I Think It is Time ….
He wrote:
Since the beginning (DirtyScottsdale.com) three years ago, I have gotten the same question from the DIRTY ARMY from all over the world: “Who is Brock from the Dirty Celeb Brock’s Chick?”
I have kept it a secret until right now… the mystery man is Ben Quayle aka Brock Landers, the son of Vice President Dan Quayle. If you are a DIRTY ARMY Republican, vote for Ben Quayle because he was one of the original creators of DirtyScottsdale.com which evolved into TheDirty.com.
Phoenix’s 12 News then ran this report, which features Quayle changing his story, saying:
“I just posted comments to try to drive some traffic."
KPNX 12 News: Quayle linked to thedirty.com: Congressional candidate was trying to help out
That got Politico back into the action.
Politico: Ben Quayle changes story on web site
The site took an uncharacteristically harsh tone with the political neophyte:
Ben Quayle had a hard time getting his story straight Tuesday….
And not just about writing for the site:
Richie also told POLITICO that Quayle introduced him to attorneys at the Phoenix law firm where he worked, Snell & Wilmer, so his Internet site could incorporate. But Quayle told POLITICO Tuesday morning that he couldn’t recall whether he had made the introduction.
Later in the day, however, Quayle confirmed to several Phoenix TV stations that he introduced Richie to an intellectual property attorney at Snell & Wilmer.
“He wanted an IP attorney, and I referred him to one,” Quayle told 12News. “I don’t know if they met or not.”
The story also said that “Brock”’s full name was “Brock Landers.”
At this point, the guy who founded Dirty Scottsdale and the Dirty.com is getting mad that Quayle is denying his association.
He responds:
The Dirty: Ben Quayle is Brock Landers
Richie links to what he says is some of Quayle/Landers' best work:
The Dirty: Brock’s Chick
Wondering where Quayle got the name Brock Landers?
Meanwhile, Politico gleefully stays on the story:
Politico: Quayle’s bump on road to Congress
Politico: Quayle Lashes out at political foes
Says Quayle:
“It is amazing that the media will take a casual acquaintance and turn it into something tawdry, taking the word of a smut peddler at face value."
New York Times op-ed columnist Gail Collins takes a few swipes at Quayle, too.
NYT: More American Idols:
Consider Ben Quayle, the son of the former vice president. He’s running for Congress in Arizona. He’s been accused of both using a phony family in his campaign pictures and helping to found a local porn site. In response, he’s come up with a new ad in which he announces that Barack Obama is the “worst president in history,” swiftly bemoans “drug cartels in Mexico, tax cartels in D.C.” and concludes that “somebody has to go to Washington and knock the hell out of the place.”
Talk about a clear agenda for change. Although Quayle does show a terrible disrespect for the records of Warren Harding and James Buchanan.
And more locally, the right-wing blogger Greg Patterson says the game might be over for Young Benny Quayle.
Espresso Pundit: If this is true then Ben Quayle has no chance of going to Congress…:
The site is awful and if it’s true that Quayle is one of the founders and authors then his political career is over.
His prediction:
If it’s too late and Quayle’s name and money let him squeak through the primary then he will get crushed by CD 3 Democratic nominee Jon Hulburd (who will go on to be crushed in 2012 by Jim Waring or Dean Martin).
To distract attention, Quayle reveals himself as a noted presidential historian, contending, in a new TV commercial, that “Barack Obama is the worst president in history”:
Everyone chuckles for a day, and then goes back to asking about Dirty Scottsdale.
Meanwhile, on the national level, Quayle keeps lying. He tells ABCnews.com, too, that he only knew Richie through referring him to a lawyer.
ABC News: Ben Quayle Denies Blogging for Racy Website.
“I am not Brock Landers,” Quayle says.
Then, on Friday, Quayle lied a few more times on CNN’s John King show.
Amusingly, King is less interested in Dirty Scottsdale than he is in Quayle’s recent contentions about Obama. (“He’s only been in office eighteen months!”)
CNN: John King USA.
“I’ve been consistent with my story from the beginning”
“I had no affiliation with that website.”
Displaying, perhaps, his father’s way with handling a gaffe, Quayle, incredibly, keeps denying he was Brock Landers to the Associated Press:
AP: Like father, like son? Quayle stumbles in Arizona
Asked about the site this week, Quayle told The Associated Press that he “wrote a couple of satirical and fictional pieces for a satirical website” but that he quit doing so once the website shifted its editorial direction away from satire. Richie says the site’s content and tone have not changed from the days when Quayle was connected to it.
When asked if he wrote as Brock Landers, Quayle said: “There’s all sorts of posts under that alias and that’s not me. That’s really all I’ve got to say about that.”
Back in Arizona, the Arizona Capitol Times advances the story, discovering that Quayle’s involvement went back deeper than previously known:
Arizona Capitol Times: Quayle’s ties to ‘The Dirty’ founder began in 2005
Recalled Richie, referred to here by his real name, Hooman Karamian:
“There were chicks all over the place, trying to hook up with celebrities,” Karamian said. “We moseyed around the bar and casino tables, just making fun of chicks.”
Karamian, who made a comment on his website about a “crazy hooker” in Tahoe said he was referring to that night, but said he was only talking about a woman that he and Quayle had assumed was a prostitute and on drugs.
“I said (on TheDirty.com), ‘Hey, do you remember that crazy hooker?’ because we saw some hooker who was acting crazy,” Karamian told the Arizona Capitol Times. “I wasn’t implying that he had sex with a hooker at all.”
Thanks for clearing that up, Nik!
On Saturday, the Dirty bites back some more:
The Dirty: Ben Quayle is the Pinocchio of politics
… And on Sunday, a little more:
The Dirty: Brock Landers’ aka Ben Quayle’s Family Values Campaign
10:22 PM
Ben Quayle lies on John King
“I’ve been consistent with my story from the beginning,” he says.
“I had no affiliation with that website.”
11:47 AM
Politico continues to dog Young Benny Quayle
Politico’s latest encapsulation of Quayle’s situation is hard to argue with:
Republican congressional candidate Ben Quayle’s glossy campaign photos and polished talking points paint for voters a portrait of a longtime Arizonan, accomplished attorney and family man who will bring a “new generation” to Washington.
The claims reflect the small biographical exaggerations that often accompany a political newcomer’s first campaign. The reality is that Quayle has held three jobs in four years, posed for pictures in campaign literature with children that were not his, and grew up in Washington with a famous father, former Vice President Dan Quayle, whose influential friends have given generously to the younger Quayle’s campaign.
But Quayle, 33, has had to confront a much bigger credibility issue this week after a blogger revealed that he had once been a contributing writer for Dirty Scottsdale, a raunchy, sex-themed website that covered the club scene in his adopted home town before morphing into the national gossip site TheDirty.com.
[…]
Quayle’s connection to the site has undercut the carefully honed image of a conservative with strong family values, and his inept handling of its disclosure brings up a different association with the Quayle name – his father’s gaffe-prone history.
Meanwhile, Quayle released a new campaign commercial today, in which, he calls Barack Obama “the worst president in history.”
… which is pretty funny.
Quayle’s father, of course, is frequently cited—here and here for example—as among the worst vice presidents in U.S. history.
And Young Benny Quayle himself isn’t exactly going to go down as one of the best congressional candidates in history.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/22/uselections2008.usa
10:05 PM
By the way ... where did the name "Brock Landers" come from?
… Apparently from the film Boogie Nights.
Young Benny Quayle took the name from an interesting character.
I haven’t seen the film recently, but it comes from a film-within-a-film, “Brock Landers: Angels Live In My Town,” in which our hero, the massively endowed Dirk Diggler, casts himself as an omnisexual crime-detecting stud:
Brock Landers: You still hungry?
Jessie St. Vincent: Starving.
Brock: [Unzipping pants] Then feast on that.
The video above is just the fake film credits.
You can see the full raunchy scene with the dialogue here:
8:55 AM
A second (and more important) big unanswered Ben Quayle question
… did wife Tiffany know about his moonlighting gig looking for Scottsdale’s Firstest Foxy Lady?
I read that the man the Sonoran Alliance calls “Benny” Quayle was married “recently.”
Quayle’s double life as the skanky Dirty Scottsdale’s Brock Landers was about three years ago.
8:49 AM
The big unanswered Ben Quayle question
… So, uh, did you ever find the “first foxy lady of Scottsdale?”
By the way, if there’s an original Arizona Republic story on Quayle today I can’t find it on the AZCentral site.
The original Politico story is here.
The second Politico story, in which Quayle admits he lied in the first one, is here.
8:15 AM
A new McCain attack ad against Hayworth
5:59 AM
Ben Quayle likes young girls! And once adopted a dog in Wickenberg
You might look at the photo above and think, Oh, no—not another generation of Quayles.
The photo is from a campaign mailer in Ben Quayle’s bid for the GOP nomination for John Shadegg’s congressional seat—one of two his campaign has sent out that shows him with the young girls.
Turns out that Quayle, the son of former vice president Dan Quayle, doesn’t have kids.
That despite the fact that he’s certainly acting like their father, the hedline blares “A NEW GENERATION,” and the copy below includes the line, “[Wife] Tiffany and I live in this district and are going to raise our family here.”
A Quayle spokesperson told the Arizona Capitol Times, “They’re just terribly cute kids.”
The ACT didn’t follow up and ask whether Quayle, who is 33, couldn’t find some kids his own age to play with.
An Arizona Republic story says that the Quayle website doesn’t mention any children, though it does contain the information that “Ben and Tiffany have a puppy named Louie they rescued from the Wickenburg Humane Society.”
In the ACT story, the campaign spokesperson, Damon Moley, gets a little defiant:
“We are presenting Ben as a pro-family candidate because he is a pro-family candidate,” Moley said. “We are presenting him as a traditional-values candidate because he is a traditional values candidate.”
He’s pro-family—but doesn’t happen to have one. And he’s into traditional values: Like misrepresentation and pandering.
A Politico story on the mailer says that Quayle has raised more than $1 million thus far.
6:41 AM
How did the first McCain-Hayworth debate play?
In the Republic, Dan Nowicki wrote:
McCain, the four-term incumbent who first won the Senate seat in 1986, reminded viewers that Hayworth, a former 12-year Arizona congressman, was rejected by his constituents in his final re-election bid in 2006. McCain said that was at least partly because Hayworth was a congressional big spender. And echoing the television attack ads that he has used to pound Hayworth, McCain raised the issue of a questionable 2007 infomercial that Hayworth appeared in for National Grants Conferences, a company that came under fire from consumer advocates after purporting to teach people how to exploit “free” government money programs.
“After he was voted out by his constituents, he became a lobbyist, and after that a talk-show host, and then after that, an infomercial and late-night star,” McCain said of Hayworth. “So he’s certainly had an interesting career.”
For his part, Hayworth, who is trailing McCain in the polls, came well-prepared with multiple anti-McCain one liners and zingers. He repeatedly attacked McCain as a flip-flopper on President George W. Bush’s signature tax cuts, which McCain voted against in 2001 and 2003 but now supports extending. He also blasted McCain as a supporter of “amnesty,” the term Hayworth and other critics use to describe comprehensive immigration reform, and for voting for the 2008 financial bailout.
Hayworth called McCain a “convenient conservative” and a “political shape-shifter” who has “perfected the six-year switch” to fool voters in thinking that he is a conservative while up for re-election.
Howard Fischer writes similar things in the EVT.
Neither analyzed the debate’s quality of the candidates' performance.
To PHXated, Hayworth did a lot better than McCain, from his physical positioning to his voluble answers. McCain seems uncomfortable and mumbling, and recycled platitudes from previous debates. (“Facts are stubborn things,” “There you go again,” etc.)
There’s a very long recap of the debate on the Tucson Citizen site, here.
The writer is Jim Kelley, who seems to be obsessed with the third candidate, whom he calls “Jim.” It’s kinda weird:
The closing statement was the single most important moment for Jim Deakin to hook the voter and close the deal. McCain had absolutely nothing to lose. He was short and to the point delivering what every Arizonan already knows about him and heard for the last 3 years both in the Presidential race and his non-JD bashing radio ads. JD also played it safe and delivered what everyone already knows about him, his very smooth and practiced delivery, born of true oratory experience was non-threatening and inviting. Jim choked. There is no other way to put it. The only spin to put out there is that it was a rookie mistake. He did not practice his delivery or indelibly mark into his memory the message that he and his team crafted together over the last week. He didn’t know whether to try it or just fall back to his standard close. His lack of trust in the team’s crafted message made him hesitate.
NYT take on it here.
10:56 AM
The latest blast at Hayworth from John McCain
The new commercial begins with Hayworth looking his clownish best, and then a bunch of supposed former constituents talking about how lame he was as a congressman.
(I haven’t found it online yet.)
A couple of the comments are questionable. For example, one woman says, “He voted for hundreds of billion of dollars of pork-barrel spending.”
First of all, there aren’t hundreds of billions of dollars in pork in the federal budget. That’s about how much discretionary spending there is in total.
They might be trying to total up all of his budget votes over his ten or twelve years in Congress.
But given that these were Republican budgets during a lot of his tenure—and that McCain probably voted for them too—it hardly seems cricket to tag him with voting for them.
But the most arresting claim in the ad is this:
“He voted for the Bridge to Nowhere!”
Sarah Palin tried to rewrite history in her speech at the GOP convention, but it’s well established she was a supporter of the bridge when she was governor.
7:05 PM
Arizona to the poor: Screw You
From a story in yesterday’s Republic:
Arizona grocery prices inched up in the second quarter for the second straight quarter, following more than a year of declines.
The Arizona Farm Bureau Federation’s non-scientific Market Basket Survey found that Arizona consumers paid $2.88, or 6 percent, more for a hypothetical basket of groceries in the second quarter of this year than they did in the first.
The increase in Arizona was more than the $1.66, or 4 percent, increase seen nationwide.
What did the state legislature do, with a big assist from Jan Brewer and the voters themselves?
Increase the state sales tax by one percentage point.
… bringing the total hit for a working poor family to seven percent.
Since working people spend just about all their money—and these, days, in fact, are going into debt—that translates to seven percent less food for their kids….or seven percent more debt.
Update: Dylan Smith of the Tucson Sentinel writes in to say that Arizona doesn’t charge sales tax on food. I was confused at first—I specifically recalled discussions on food sales taxes.
Turns out I was remembering articles about the city of Phoenix, which recently instituted a two percent food sales tax. I was wrong about Arizona, and shouldn’t have used food as an example.
The large point stands, however: Since working folks spend most of their earnings, they will be buying their kids six percent less food—and, thanks to Brewer & Co., seven one percent less clothes, toys and entertainment.
10:14 AM
Mary Hayworth comes to J.D.'s defense!
The Hayworth campaign’s new commercial:
To some, the ad show’s J.D. on the defense—when it’s McCain who’s supposed to be in that position.
Ben Smith in Politico:
Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth’s first ad tells you everything you need to know about the contours of the Arizona GOP Senate primary.
To recap: Hayworth is the conservative challenger and Sen. John McCain the incumbent. McCain is also a deeply unpopular figure among the sort of Arizona Republicans who show up to vote in August primaries.
Yet it’s Hayworth who is on defense in his TV debut, a low-budget number apparently airing only on Fox News in Tucson.
Why is a challenger deploying his wife with the soft-lens, my-husband-is-not-perfect line as his first commercial out of the shoot?
Smith’s answer is that McCain has been watching Charlie Crist get crucified in Nevada by challenger Marco Rubio … and has been careful to inoculate himself against the same sorts of attacks.
7:00 AM
National Review endorses McCain, tepidly
The leading doctrinaire conservative magazine can’t muster up enough enthusiasm for Hayworth to overcome its long-standing distrust of McCain.
In the endorsement of the incumbent in the GOP primary, there’s a palpable sense of wistfulness that his challenger wasn’t a little stronger:
Hayworth is, to say the least, not obviously a more exemplary statesman than McCain. On one of the most pressing issues of the day — the need to control federal spending — McCain has had the better record. That Hayworth appeared in infomercials to tell people how to get “free money” from the government underscores the point rather emphatically.
If McCain had a different challenger, we might think differently. But, taken together, these considerations move us to suggest that Arizona Republicans nominate Senator McCain.
Hayworth is a buffoon, of course, but McCain has done dozens of worse things than Hayworth’s infomercial.
The endorsement is already drawing fire from right-0wingers.
9:16 PM
J.D. Hayworth apologizes for that sleazy informercial he did
A few days ago, J.D. was standing by the patently skanky commercial:
“I always say about any product or service, one of the staples I learned growing up is caveat emptor, ‘buyer beware.’ I think that is a given in any commercial endeavor – I would certainly hope in this one. But yeah, I’m a broadcaster, and yeah, I appeared in this, and yes, it was a job. And that’s that.”
(You can see it below.)
Today, he’s running for the hills:
“I should not have made the ad. It was a mistake. I believed, as did former Congressman J.C.Watts, this to be a reputable firm, but I did not completely check out the organization. I hope voters will look past a video presentation made three years ago and instead look at the issues confronting us in 2010.”
Here’s the best parts of the infomercial in question:
10:22 AM
J.D.: Say it isn't so!
From a killer Dan Nowicki post this morning:
Republican Senate challenger J.D. Hayworth appeared in a 2007 television infomercial in which he helped convince viewers that they could rake in big bucks by attending seminars that would teach them how to apply for federal grants that they wouldn’t have to pay back.
National Grants Conferences, the Florida-based company that hosted the classes and produced the informercial, has faced criticism from multiple state attorneys general and Better Business Bureaus.
Hayworth, a former Arizona congressman who is running against incumbent Sen. John McCain, R-
Ariz., in the Aug. 24 GOP primary, made the infomercial after losing his U.S. House seat in the 2006 election. References to his TV appearance on behalf of National Grants Conferences appear in his Wikipedia entry, on the Internet Movie Database and other places on the Web. But the footage was unavailable. Highlights of Hayworth’s appearance are now posted on YouTube.com at this link.
The infomercial promotes seminars that ostensibly instruct attendees how to get the “free money grants.” Tucson TV station KVOA did an investigation of National Grants Conferences that you can watch here. The TV station’s investigative team found that the workshops cost from $999 to $1,200 and federal government grants really aren’t even available to individuals.
Politico story on the infomercial here.
2:01 PM
PHXations—Friday, June 18, 2010
The AP is reporting that White House staffers will meet with Governor Brewer in Arizona on June 28th
The White House set a June 28 date for staffers to meet with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on her turf and provide more detail on sending National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
When Brewer met with Obama at the White House two weeks ago, promises were made for the follow-up meeting. The White House announced Friday it was keeping its promised date. Obama is not planning to attend.
CBS News confirms that the federal government will challenge SB 1070:
It was unclear yesterday whether Clinton’s comments were simply a prediction or mistake or whether instead she was getting ahead of a planned announcement by the administration.
Now a senior administration official tells CBS News that the federal government will indeed formally challenge the law when Justice Department lawyers are finished building the case. The official said Justice is still working on building the case.
Whodathunkit? GOP hiding facts about immigration law
It’s typical of Brewer and her Republican friends who consistently have failed to crack down on the violent and criminal acts that accompany illegal immigration. Their patchwork policies do nothing to solve the real problem that Arizonans experience every day.
They failed to point out that the new law will do nothing to stop the coyotes, human traffickers and dangerous drug and arms dealers who cross our border every day.
They don’t mention that the new law is an unfunded mandate and gives police no resources or money to implement the new law. Brewer and Republicans took police officers off the streets when they massively cut public-safety funding this year.
Read the whole thing at Arizona Capitol Times
While Arizona’s politicians have spent time persecuting gays and Mexicans and letting the state’s finances go into the toilet, more industrious folks in town have been working to put us on the map in an important national ranking, the Republic reports:
Arizona now ranks fourth for mortgage fraud nationally. It’s the first time the state has cracked the top five for the problem, according to data released this week from the Mortgage Asset Research Institute.
Florida, New York and California (in that order) rank ahead of Arizona in 2009 mortgage-fraud cases. The most prevalent type of home-loan fraud is application misrepresentation, which includes borrowers lying about income. Overall, U.S. mortgage fraud climbed 7 percent last year.
Officials on the state and federal level are (finally) going after mortgage fraud, the paper says in a related story:
A federal and state law-enforcement task force has accelerated arrests and prosecutions of Arizona residents accused of participating in mortgage-fraud schemes involving kickbacks, inflated property appraisals, phony buyers and other tactics.
There have been 51 Arizona indictments and 13 convictions since the task force was assembled March 1, all of them involving allegations of fraud against lenders, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
2:23 PM
The Sonoran Alliance goes on the attack—against McCain
The right-wing blog supports J.D. Hayworth in the GOP senate primary.
Yesterday it posted this left-wing attack piece on McCain’s friendliness with lobbyists, the ones he talks about being so stridently opposed to:
… all to the tune of the “Friends” theme. The maker of the video is Robert Greenwald, who has done a series of contentious documentaries on Fox News, Wal-Mart, and Iraq war profiteers.
7:34 AM
What exactly does Arizona's Tea Party stand for?
Mike Sunnucks, in the PBJ, analyzes the things that motivates Arizona’s wing of the Tea Party folks:
[T]he anti-tax wing of the tea parties was nowhere to be found when the Proposition 100 sales tax referendum was easily passed by voters. Brewer backed that sales tax hike despite it going against conservative dogma. The governor’s signing of the immigration bill erased her tax increase sins.
Right now, the tea party blend in Arizona is anti-immigration and socially conservative. Sure there are tea party folks who care about spending, taxes and Wall Street bailouts, as well as some who simply don’t like Barack Obama being president or trust his own birth papers. But right now, immigration and its social implications are fueling everything political in the state — including the tea party.
6:58 AM
PHXations—Tuesday, June 8, 2010
An ABC News/Washington Post poll suggests that support for the Tea Party movement is weakening:
“Do you have a favorable or unfavorable impression of the political movement known as the Tea Party?” the survey asked.
Thirty-six percent gave thumbs-up to the Tea Party, while 50 percent had a “Somewhat” or “Strongly” unfavorable view. Fourteen percent had no opinion.
Support for the right-wing populist movement was down from 41 percent in March.
Via GOOD)
/yaa
Buying local has big impacts:
A study released today found that SCF Arizona, the state’s largest workers’ compensation insurer, had a $528.3 million economic impact in Arizona in 2009.
The Phoenix company sourced 82 percent of its goods and services from other Arizona companies, according to the study released by Local First Arizona, a nonprofit that encourages Arizona businesses to buy locally.
Kimber Lanning, executive director of Local First, said the purpose of the study was to demonstrate how one major employer can have a significant impact on Arizona’s economy when buying from other Arizona-based companies. She said this is the first fully scientific study that measures the economic impact of a single employer.
SCF is in the process of becoming a private company. Gov. Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1045 into law in May, directing SCF to become a mutual insurance company, which means it would be owned by its policyholders. Created in 1925 as a state agency, SCF Arizona covers more than 35,000 businesses and has about a 40 percent market share in the state.
/yaa
The Republic reports on one benefit of SB 1070:
In the seven weeks since Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed Arizona’s tough new immigration law, there has been a sharp increase in the number of Latinos registering to vote as Democrats, party officials say, jumping from about 100 a week before to 500 now.
Many of those registering are young Latino citizens whose parents may be undocumented.
“Before, it used to be hard,” said Luis Heredia, executive director of the Arizona Democratic Party. “Now, they are just saying, ‘Can you give me a form?’ or, ‘I am already registered, but I know someone who isn’t.’”
Regardless of their political affiliation, ethnicity or reason, it is promising to see a new generation of citizens getting involved in politics.
/yaa
In the Arizona Capitol Times, Jeremy Duda reports on the Supreme Court’s administrative decision that effectively blocks matching funds for this election cycle:
The U.S. Supreme Court blocked Arizona’s Clean Elections system from distributing matching funds, throwing a number of high profile campaigns into disarray just weeks before candidates were to start receiving money.
The court on June 8 granted a request by the Goldwater Institute to halt a recent ruling of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that declared matching funds constitutional. The justices ordered that the distribution of matching funds be put on hold until it can hear a full appeal of the matching funds system.
Goldwater Institute attorney Nick Dranias said he doesn’t expect the court to hear the appeal in McComish v. Bennett until around October, meaning matching funds are essentially finished for 2010.
The primary election is Aug. 24. The general election is Nov. 2.
/yaa
Hall & Oates have joined the list of artists boycotting Arizona. From the PBJ:
“Private Eyes” won’t be watching Phoenix next month.
1980s rock duo Daryl Hall and John Oates have canceled their July 2 concert at Chase Field because of Arizona’s contentious immigration law. They had been scheduled to perform after the Arizona Diamondbacks’ game with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
6:51 PM
PHXations—Monday, June 7, 2010
600+ MCSO officers picked up their back pay today:
The county is paying $2.1 million in overtime back pay to 1,690 officers under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Labor.
A 10-month investigation by labor officials found Sheriff Joe Arpaio mismanaged overtime pay and illegally asked officers to attend pre-shift briefings without paying them.
An Arizona Republic story detailing concerns of widespread mismanagement of overtime pay by the Sheriff’s Office triggered the federal investigation.
The money will come out of the sheriff’s detention fund…
/yaa (emphasis added)
Buzz Mills: the (2.3) Million Dollar Man:
PHOENIX (AP) – Yavapai County businessman Buz Mills has spent nearly $2.3 million in the Republican primary campaign for Arizona governor.
Mills this week reported spending that much through May 31 in what is now a five-way race.
Incumbent Jan Brewer has received $707,000 of public funding for the primary. She’s eligible to receive $1.4 million more June 22 because of Mills' higher spending – if the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t block matching funds.
State Treasurer Dean Martin also is running with public funding but hasn’t qualified yet.
Two lesser-known Republicans are also running with private funding. They are Tom Gordon of Mesa and Matthew Jette of Apache Junction
Tucson attorney John Munger ended his privately funded campaign Tuesday.
Via KSWT
/yaa
The Constitution is a mere annoyance to Russell Pearce and the AZGOP:
…Pearce’s proposal, which has yet to be drafted as legislation, may target the right of citizenship now granted to children born here under a wide set of circumstances. His goal, he said, was to stop wasting taxpayer money on people who shouldn’t be classified as citizens and, therefore, don’t deserve the services of the government.
Rep. John Kavanagh, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said it’s completely irrational to grant citizenship to people merely because they were born on U.S. soil. He said illegal immigrants take advantage of the system by crossing into the U.S. to have babies here.
[…]
But immigration lawyers and constitutional experts said any law denying citizenship to children of illegal immigrants would be plainly unconstitutional and bound for rejection in federal courts. Whatever the state does won’t change the fact that the 14th Amendment outlines specifically that anyone who is born here is a U.S. citizen, said immigration attorney Regina Jefferies.
/yaa
Sheriff Joe may be costing Maricopa County even more money. The Arizona Capitol Times reports that:
Officials who have complained for years about high legal costs tied to the internal power struggle in Arizona’s most populous county have filed legal notices asking for millions in damages, citing emotional stress caused by the political warfare.
Judges, supervisors, employees and one private citizen all say they were wrongfully targeted by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former County Attorney Andrew Thomas in lawsuits and criminal investigations.
Their damage claims range from $1.75 million to $10 million, and attorneys say the potential settlements would keep Arpaio and Thomas from wrongfully investigating others.
/yaa
The Cactus League is facing some thorny times according to the Republic:
The success in growing the Cactus League is indisputable. But when the economy cratered, tax revenues fell, crippling the long-term outlook for crucial funding for Cactus League cities from the Valley-based Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority. That agency is charged with managing and distributing funds collected from Maricopa County hotel and rental-car taxes earmarked for spring training.
Glendale and Goodyear may get no more than just over half the money they expected to help them pay off bonds issued to build their ballparks. The cash the sports authority promised for renovations of other ballparks could fall short, given that teams are demanding more amenities and new facilities.
Mesa, which is fending off a bid from Naples, Fla., to lure away the Cactus League’s marquee attraction, the Chicago Cubs, proposes to sell off land it owns in Pinal County to cover costs for a new ballpark to keep the team.
Meanwhile, protesters are calling for Cactus League teams to leave Arizona because of the state’s new immigration law.
/yaa
The Republic notes that 10 people are competing for the retiring John Shadegg’s Congressional seat in the Republican primary in August.
The three main contenders are Ben Quayle, the son of the former VP; Vernon Parker, the mayor of Paradise Valley; and Paulina Morris, who the paper says supports abortion rights.
There’s not much meat in the story however; Quayle’s big idea, for example, is repealing Obama’s health-care legislation.
The story says there are about 150,000 Republicans in the 3rd District, about 105,000 Democrats, and 110,000 independents.
Here’s a map, courtesy of GovTrack.Us.
(N.B.: PHXations are posted by various PHXated contributors throughout the day).
6:25 PM
PHXations—Friday, June 4
Is ASU too big for it’s own good?
> ASU is too big and wields too much power in politics and development. The Empire must be broken to give Arizonans more choices and greater access. Arizona could increase college graduation rates (rather than mere enrollment rates) and Arizona could easily strengthen its university system.
Read the whole post at Voices of Arizona.
/yaa
KEZ has set up a tribute page for Bill Austin. From Phoenix Business Journal:
Austin co-hosted KEZ’s morning show with Beth McDonald from 1990 until February 2010. He retired in February at age 55. McDonald continues to host the soft-rock station’s highly rated morning drive show.
KEZ’s website offers a venue for fans, radio station staff and other to talk about Austin’s positive impact on the business and the Valley. It also links to news stories about his passing and includes pictures of the longtime Phoenix radio duo.
Austin never talked about his illness on the air and did not mention his failing health as a reason for his retirement. Before joining the “Beth and Bill” show, he was a weatherman at KPNX-TV Channel 12 in Phoenix.
/yaa
RIP Lola Tapas
Chef Eric Gitenstein tells me he just found out about owner Felicia Ruiz’s decision — but he doesn’t seem very surprised.
“Slowly, sales have dropped over time. We tried lunch, but people would always go to Culver’s to get a burger instead of coming here,” he says. “We were busy on the weekends, but the weekends alone can’t support a restaurant.”
This was Lola’s fifth year in business. Ruiz opened the business back in 2005 with her now-ex-husband, Daniel Wayne, who owns Lola Coffee.
[…]
This, more than ever is an era where saying ‘I’ve been meaning to go there’ is not enough. Intent does not save local businesses, action does. If you find a local gem, support it by being a patron, otherwise we will be just a city of chains and mediocre food.
/yaa (bolding added)
Looks like Russell Pearce has some still competition for most zany state senator in the US:
The story said that although Haley has “gone out of her way to make sure people know she is a Christian,” she was raised in the Sikh faith and placed more emphasis on that tradition when she ran for the state legislature in 2004.
This evening in an interview with Pub Politics, state Sen. Jake Knotts (R-SC) — who is supporting a different candidate — slammed Haley by using a racial slur:
We already got one raghead in the White House, we don’t need a raghead in the governor’s mansion.
Ouch!
Addendum. Turns out that Senator Knotts wasn’t done:
Knotts says he believes Haley’s father has been sending letters to India saying that Haley is the first Sikh running for high office in America. He says her father walks around Lexington wearing a turban.
“We’re at war over there,” Knotts said.
Asked to clarify, he said he did not mean the United States was at war with India, but was at war with “foreign countries.”
Well that’s something, I guess.
Addendum 2. Senator Knotts Just can’t keep his foot out of his mouth. Here is a transcript of his ‘apology’:
“Unfortunately, the show was not recorded as was intended. If it had been recorded, the public would be able to hear firsthand that my “raghead” comments about Obama and Haley were intended in jest. Bear in mind that this is a freewheeling, anything-goes Internet radio show that is broadcast from a pub. It’s like local political version of Saturday Night Live, which is actually where the joke came from.
Since my intended humorous context was lost in translation, I apologize.
I still believe Ms. Haley is pretending to be someone she is not, much as Obama did, but I apologize to both for an unintended slur.”
/yaa
ASU and the Mayo Clinic are in talks about … something, the Phoenix Business Journal reports:
ASU spokesman Virgil Renzulli said the university and Mayo are in an intense planning phase to further develop their relationship and are discussing about 50 topics, including expanding collaborative research and creating curriculum. He did not provide further details.
But the story quotes Phil Gordon saying something bigger might be up:
Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said he hopes to see ASU and Mayo develop a medical school in the next decade.
“I’m confident in the future (ASU President) Michael Crow, working in partnership with Mayo Hospital and Councilwoman Peggy Neely, will figure out a way when the time is right to have a medical school there,” he said. “It’s not a pie-in-the-sky dream. It’s a matter of when, not if.”
11:22 PM
PHXations—Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Brewer seems to be be getting use to the politician thing. She can bend the truth with the best of them:
Gov. Jan Brewer said in a recent interview that her father died fighting Nazis in Germany. In fact, the death of Wilford Drinkwine came 10 years after World War II had ended. During the war, Drinkwine worked as a civilian supervisor for a naval munitions depot in Hawthorne, Nev. He died of lung disease in 1955 in California. Brewer made the comment to The Arizona Republic while talking about the criticism she has taken since signing SB 1070, the new immigration law that makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally.
“Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that… and then to have them call me Hitler’s daughter. It hurts. It’s ugliness beyond anything I’ve ever experienced,” Brewer said in the story, published Tuesday.
Officials with the governor’s administration said her statement should not be taken to mean that she was claiming her father was a soldier in Germany during the Nazi regime.
(/yaa)
Why should speculators have all the real estate fun?
More state buildings go up for sale next week as Arizona officials hope to raise $300 million and help close the budget deficit.
It’s the second time this year that the state has sold off buildings in a sale-leaseback plan. The first one in January raised $735.4 million and that prompted Arizona lawmakers to authorize a second sale.
The sale will be conducted June 8 and investors will be required to make purchases in $5,000 installments. Investors must work through a list of underwriters provided by the state.
The sale-leaseback comes on the heels of last week’s action in which the state borrowed $450 million against the proceeds of future state Lottery revenues.
(/yaa)
The city of Tucson is joining a suit against SB 1070, another sign of the ferocious divisions the law has engendered in the state.
The suit is the one by the Latino Tucson cop who was one of the first to attack the law legally.
From KGUN-TV in Tucson:
In the cross-claim, the city agrees with Escobar that SB 1070 will violate the United States Constitution. Specifically, the cross-claim states that the new Arizona law conflicts with the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution and also with the federal Immigration and Naturalization Act. The city’s filing asks the federal court to intervene to stop implementation. The cross-claim names the State of Arizona and Governor Jan Brewer as defendants.
(N.B.: PHXations are posted by various PHXated contributors throughout the day).
4:35 PM
Politico trashes John McCain's campaign
The McCain-Hayworth primary race makes the site’s list of the year’s worst campaigns, emphases added:
Thanks to a baggage-laden opponent, Sen. John McCain’s campaign may not be a flop electorally: he leads in every poll against former Rep. J.D. Hayworth ahead of this summer’s primary.
But in his desperate bid to hang onto his Senate seat, McCain has already lost something — his well-cultivated image as a different kind of politician who dared to take on his party and speak difficult truths.
Racing to get to the right, he has unapologetically discarded any stance which may be unhelpful in a conservative-dominated primary, most notably his leadership on immigration reform and climate change. In the not-too-distant past he spoke passionately about both issues as matters of conscience, to hell with the political consequences.
But it’s not just the issues, per se, it’s the lengths McCain is going to shed his former political skin that have some of his former advisers shaking their heads about what he’s doing to get six more years in Washington. With no hint of the irony he was once known for, and apparent amnesia about the White House campaign he waged two years ago, he said he never actually considered himself “a maverick.” And after openly mocking conservatives who were obsessed with simply building more fences on the border — “I think the fence is least effective. But I’ll build the goddamned fence if they want it” — he’s now airing an ad in which he’s seen walking along said fence and promising to “complete the danged fence.”
It may be enough to fend off Hayworth, but by seeming to do anything to win re-election McCain has torched one of the most famous brands in modern American politics.
10:54 AM
J.D. Hayworth gets smacked by McCain—and then E.J Montini
We like J.D. Hayworth.
Not personally, but we’d like to see him knock John McCain out of the race in the GOP primary and be easier pickings for a Democrat in November.
Not so much because we favor Democrats as that we think Arizona needs a higher quality of elected representative and we think McCain is a bad person and a bad senator.
Anyway, J.D., who is, let’s face it, a buffoon of the first order, managed to turn himself into a joke recently by declaiming for some reason or another that the U.S. didn’t declare war on Germany during the Second World War.
(We assume it had something to do with arguing that it’s OK that America has been fighting wars for decades now without formally declaring it. This is of course inconsistent with the right-wing mantra that the constitution should be interpreted strictly.)
That made Hayworth a staple of the news shows for a day, and the Mccain campaign capitalized on it immediately, putting together a video mocking Hayworth you can see below.
Anyway, Hayworth smacked back at McCain today with a press release. Unfortunately, they sent it to E.J. Montini, who noticed the release misspelled McCain’s name in the hedline—and had a dropped word besides.
Sigh.
1:26 PM
All of a sudden John McCain is into pork!
I think there’s a new McCain for Senate ad out—I saw it on Letterman last night, but I can’t find it on his web site or on You Tube.
Anyway, it’s bragging how John McCain brings military-spending dollars to Arizona.
One hundred thousand jobs [the voice-over intone]. Nine billion dollars a year. Our military bases are vital for the economy of Arizona. And so is Senator John McCain.
As senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain’s on the front lines of protecting Arizona’s military bases.
John McCain keeps us and Arizona strong.
Meanwhile, his web site is touting a new attack ad on J.D. Hayworth … for voting for too many earmarks.
9:16 AM
John McCain, at the epicenter of a crisis: "Uh, I'll just listen"
You’ll remember the day in 2008 the financial system collapsed and John McCain suspended his presidential campaign and ran back to DC to take charge.
As PHXated has noted previously, then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s account of the day showed that McCain’s effect on the meetings was essentially that of a large pile of potato sacks.
Now a new book on the first year of the Obama administration by Jonathan Alter tells a similar tale. Here’s an account of it in today’s New York Times:
> Barack Obama demonstrated his economic prowess at an extraordinary White House meeting several weeks before he was even elected president. As Jonathan Alter tells it in “The Promise: President Obama, Year One” (Simon & Schuster), this breakout performance occurred at a Sept. 25, 2008, confab requested by the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain.
The meeting was a calculated gambit by Mr. McCain to prove his leadership abilities after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. But the book says that when Mr. Obama asked, “What do you think, John?” Mr. McCain feebly joked his way out of an answer, saying, “I’ll just listen.”
Later, Mr. Alter says, Mr. McCain acknowledged that he had not yet read a three-page outline of the controversial $700 billion bailout plan by Henry M. Paulson Jr., then the Treasury secretary.
President George W. Bush was “poorly informed and detached,” the book says. But Mr. Obama, who had read Mr. Paulson’s plan and copious amounts of related material, stepped into the breach. He gave a cogent overview of the crisis and declared that the Democrats were close to agreement with Mr. Paulson on a deal to approve the bailout.
When he was done, Mr. Alter reports, “a Republican sitting some distance down the long table whispered to a pair of Democratic senators, ‘Everyone here is ready to vote for Obama, including the Republicans.’ ”
See also PHXated’s “The case against John McCain.”
11:02 AM
The jihadist hiding in the McCain campaign sign
Can you see it?
His beady red eyes and menacing turban?
He’s even wrapping himself in our flag to disguise his foul intentions.
Here’s a close-up:
(h/t: PHXated reader D.W.)
12:26 PM
The case against John McCain
Arizona’s senior senator has a lingering image as an unusual politician—one who will take the hard stance for what’s right, or who will team up with the other side on difficult issues that are in the public’s best interest. The McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill and his moves toward comprehensive immigration reform are two good examples of this.
The trouble with John McCain is that this aspect of his career and personality is a tiny one. It is far outstripped by myriad and crippling personal and political flaws.
As McCain approaches a campaign for his fifth term as a senator, Arizonans have their best chance yet to throw this phony out.
If you’re curious about McCain, PHXated has created this handy guide to his decidedly unbrilliant career.
It’s a portrait of the real McCain, the one that’s been suppurating under the surface of his PR façade.
I. He’s a right-winger.
McCain’s moderate image is a fraud. As noted below, it surfaced only after he got his hand caught in the corruption cookie jar.
But given the chance he will always come back to his real values, which embrace the least-generous impulses in the American psyche; a belligerent, unthinking recklessness abroad; leaving the country’s most defenseless to fend for themselves; and, in general, resisting change any way possible.
He’s an abortion fetishist. (He even mocked the concept of the “health of the mother” during a presidential debate.) He’s a stalwart supporter of the American anti-sex brigade. (While having shown himself as quite the ladies man himself.) He’s against gay marriage and against even letting gays serve openly in the armed forces. (Again, after decades of behaving like a goon himself in the service.) He was doggedly against establishing a holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. He supported the vicious Nicaraguan contras.
He’s voted for tax cuts for the rich just about every chance he got, and he didn’t do anything to stop the anti-regulation brigade from giving a green light to the demolition derby that destroyed the country’s economy. He voted against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He voted to ban desecration of the flag, years after the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional; and he voted for the cruel bill that made it harder for people to file bankruptcy. (That was just before the economy his party destroyed drove untold thousands into the poorhouse.)
His incessant blabbering about the surge ignores the facts that a) we shouldn’t have been in Iraq in the first place and b) that the war had been utterly mismanaged to that point. He’s against withdrawing troops from Iraq, now, of course, and has always voted to confirm ideologues— Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, Alito and Roberts—to the Supreme Court.
II. He’s reckless.
Sarah Palin today is a wildly amusing character, and one who promises to disrupt Republican Party presidential race enjoyably in 2012.
But the idea of her being a 72–year-old man’s heartbeat away from the presidency is less funny.
Has any recent move by any politician of either party has had the potential to endanger America more?
Obama (himself a relatively untested figure) could have crashed and burned during the election. McCain could well be president right now—and be facing health problems.
The rash act was part of a pattern. During the 2008 crisis, as the economy tanked, McCain suddenly ended his campaign, cancelled an appearance on Letterman, made a detour to an interview with Katie Couric, and then rushed to Washington to… read some lines off an index card, as Henry Paulson recounts in his new memoir.
What a bozo, right?
Well, that’s the impression he gives to those of us on the left.
Maybe we’re being unfair.
Let’s hear from people closer to him.
Amazingly, those on the right have an even deeper sense of the man’s flaws. Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone:
At least three of McCain’s GOP colleagues have gone on record to say that they consider him temperamentally unsuited to be commander in chief. [Bob] Smith, the former senator from New Hampshire, has said that McCain’s “temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him.” Sen. Domenici of New Mexico has said he doesn’t “want this guy anywhere near a trigger.” And Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi weighed in that "the thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded.
Those are the guys on his side!
III. He’s a jerk to women, and he cheats on his wife.
McCain humiliated his first wife, whose name was Carol. Stories of his running around are legion.
Rolling Stone published “a devastating look back at McCain’s personal and political careers in 2008”: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain. The story was called “Make Believe Maverick" and was written by Tim Dickinson.
Here’s what he wrote about McCain’s two marriages:
If heroism is defined by physical suffering, Carol McCain is every bit her ex-husband’s equal. Driving alone on Christmas Eve 1969, she skidded out on a patch of ice and crashed into a telephone pole. She would spend six months in the hospital and undergo 23 surgeries. The former model McCain bragged of to his buddies in the POW camp as his “long tall Sally” was now five inches shorter and walked with crutches.
By any standard, McCain treated her contemptibly. Whatever his dreams of getting laid in Rio, he got plenty of ass during his command post in Jacksonville. According to biographer Robert Timberg, McCain seduced his conquests on off-duty cross-country flights — even though adultery is a court-martial offense. He was also rumored to be romantically involved with a number of his subordinates.
In the spring of 1979, while conducting official business for the Navy, the still-married McCain encountered Cindy Lou Hensley, a willowy former cheerleader for USC. Mutually smitten, the two lied to each other about their ages. The 24-year-old Hensley became 27; the 42-year-old McCain became 38. For nearly a year the two carried on a cross-country romance while McCain was still living with Carol: Court documents filed with their divorce proceeding indicate that they “cohabitated as husband and wife” for the first nine months of the affair.
Although McCain stresses in his memoir that he married Cindy three months after divorcing Carol, he was still legally married to his first wife when he and Cindy were issued a marriage license from the state of Arizona. The divorce was finalized on April 2nd, 1980. McCain’s second marriage — rung in at the Arizona Biltmore with Gary Hart as a groomsman — was consummated only six weeks later, on May 17th. The union gave McCain access to great wealth: Cindy, whose father was the exclusive distributor for Budweiser in the Phoenix area, is now worth an estimated $100 million.
His relationship with second wife Cindy isn’t any more attractive.
Here’s a story, from the Rolling Stone piece, about a campaign nearly twenty years ago:
During his 1992 campaign, at the end of a long day, McCain’s wife, Cindy, mussed his receding hair and needled him playfully that he was “getting a little thin up there.” McCain reportedly blew his top, cutting his wife down with the kind of language that had gotten him hauled into court as a high schooler: “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” Even though the incident was witnessed by three reporters, the McCain campaign denies it took place.
Think he’s mellowed? Here’s a passage from Game Change, the new book on the 2008 presidential campaign:
“FUCK YOU! FUCK, FUCK, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!!”
McCain let out the stream of sharp epithets, both middle fingers raised and extended, barking in his wife’s face. He was angry; she had interrupted him. Cindy burst into tears, but, really, she should have been used to it by now.”
IV. He’s a crummy senator.
Arizona by most social metrics is a honorary member of the Deep South. It could use a little federal help to evolve its economy and try to join the modern world, the way other backward states do.
McCain, with his twisted view of how politics should work, hasn’t been a help.
Here’s Amy Silverman, New Times’ resident expert on McCain:
(McCain’s e)fforts to stop pork-barreling are sadly cosmetic, as well. First off, the earmarks that groups like Taxpayers for Common Sense rail against account for only 1 percent of the federal budget. One percent.
And it’s not all bridges to nowhere. McCain, who used to fight for projects like a regional airport for metropolitan Phoenix [. . .] now refuses to fund anything for the state. And his sheep, er, colleagues — Arizona congressmen John Shadegg and Jeff Flake — have followed suit. As a result, Arizona ranked dead last in earmark funding in the past fiscal year.
He’s not even good on foreign policy. Winning in Iraq would be “easy,” he said before the war. The U.S. would be greeted as liberators!
V. He’s a hypocrite and a sophist.
He fishes for votes amongst the worst most moralistic Americans, while he’s been a skirt-chaser his whole life. He abuses his wives and has cheated on at least one of them, yet he acts morally superior to gay men and women who tried to build their own lives together.
He will argue whatever side of any issue benefits him at the time.
Here he is recently on Meet the Press, talking about the “reconciliation” option on the recent health care bill:
SEN. McCAIN: I objected to that because I believed, as Robert Byrd does, that, that we should not be addressing these issues through 51 votes.
MR. GREGORY: But, Senator, you have voted for bills through reconciliation nine times since 1989.
SEN. McCAIN: Yes. Yes, I have voted for them, but I objected strenuously […]
I voted for them, but I objected strenuously!
McCain’s never shown any compassion for drug addicts. Tens of thousands of harmless drug offenders rot in the nation’s jails, costing taxpayers a fortune and creating untold further societal costs in ruined lives.
.. well, except for one drug addict: His wife Cindy, who got hooked on pills and stole them from her charity to feed her addiction.
There are people who have done a lot less sitting in Joe Arpaio’s Tent City-–or lying forgotten in other hell holes across the country. (A full Washington Post story on the affair is here.)
VI. He’s also intellectually dishonest, willing to contort himself into rhetorical knots to stick to his atavistic, hateful politics.
Here’s a good example.
Four years ago, when the military’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy was up for review, he said, “The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy,’ then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it.”
As you might have read, the leadership of the military did just that in recent weeks; the chairman of the joint chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, said “allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.” He was joined by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican—and a few weeks later, General David Petraeus said the policy should be reconsidered as well.
In response, McCain told the brass: “I’m extremely disappointed in your statement…. At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the ’don’t ask don’t tell’ policy. I’m happy to say we still have a Congress of the United States that would still have to pass a law to repeal ’don’t ask don’t tell.’”
A gentler man, one who’s psyche was consistent with the genial soul who warbled about “God’s children” n the debate over immigration reform, would use the general’s change of heart as a learning moment for his bigoted constituency. Instead, McCain, tacking right to fend off Hayworth’s primary challenge, is playing to their worst instincts.
And in a recent issue of Newsweek, McCain was asked about his maverick image. His reply:
“I never considered myself a maverick.”
VII. He’s a champion flip-flopper
Since McCain has had to contort himself philosophically each time he’s run for national office, he has a record as a flip-flopper the likes of which Washington has very rarely seen. Dickinson in Rolling Stone:
When challenged on The View, McCain again defied those who accuse him of flip-flopping. “What specific area have I quote ‘changed’?” he demanded. “Nobody can name it.”
In fact, his own statements show that he has been on both sides of a host of vital issues: the Bush tax cuts, the estate tax, waterboarding, hunting down terrorists in Pakistan, kicking Russia out of the G-8, a surge of troops into Afghanistan, the GI Bill, storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, teaching intelligent design, fully funding No Child Left Behind, offshore drilling, his own immigration policy and withdrawal timelines for Iraq.
VIII. He’s a creep.
Besides the way he treats the women he sleeps with, he’s a jerk to regular folks as well. Amy Silverman, in New Times, has the tale of what happened to Rose Mofford, who ascended to the governor’s office after the impeachment of Evan Mecham, when she went to DC to testify before McCain’s committee. It’s a complicated story, but basically Mofford, who’d been governor for all of eight days, got blindsided by some hostile questions from a senator been fed them by McCain.
Silverman, quoting a friend of McCain’s:
“During lunch, McCain said, almost with mischievous glee, that he had slipped some highly technical questions to [James McClure] to ask Mofford — questions she wouldn’t be prepared to answer or expected to answer.
“Flabbergasted, I asked McCain why would he want to sabotage Mofford’s testimony, when in fact the CAP was the nonpartisan pet of Republicans and Democrats — such as far-left Udall and far-right Goldwater — since its inception.
“His reply, as near as I remember, was, ’I’ll embarrass a Democrat any time I get the chance.’
These tendencies are lifelong ones. Rolling Stone:
McCain was not only a lousy student, he had his father’s taste for drink and a darkly misogynistic streak. The summer after his sophomore year, cruising with a friend near Arlington, McCain tried to pick up a pair of young women. When they laughed at him, he cursed them so vilely that he was hauled into court on a profanity charge.
McCain’s admittance to Annapolis was preordained by his bloodline. But martial discipline did not seem to have much of an impact on his character. By his own account, McCain was a lazy, incurious student; he squeaked by only by prevailing upon his buddies to help him cram for exams. He continued to get sauced and treat girls badly. Before meeting a girlfriend’s parents for the first time, McCain got so shitfaced that he literally crashed through the screen door when he showed up in his white midshipman’s uniform.”
IX. Even his military career has been overhyped.
McCain was shot down over Vietnam and spent years in a Vietnamese prison. He is routinely called a hero for this terrible ordeal. We’re not going to argue that, but it’s also true that his primary status was, like the hundreds of thousands of US serviceman at the time (not to mention millions of Vietnamese) not so much a hero as a victim—indeed, one grievously injured, abused, denied medical attention and left with lifelong physical impairments.
That said, as Tim Dickinson writes, McCain was a crummy serviceman. He crashed two planes while on active duty, and another near the end of his career. Since he was the son of an admiral, he was given a pass for this record, which would have permanently grounded a regular flyer.
Dickinson rounds up all the other tales about what a crappy sailor McCain was.
He repeatedly blew up in the face of his commanding officer. It was the kind of insubordination that would have gotten any other midshipman kicked out of Annapolis. But his classmates soon realized that McCain was untouchable. Midway though his final year, McCain faced expulsion, about to “bilge out” because of excessive demerits. After his mother intervened, however, the academy’s commandant stepped in. Calling McCain “spoiled” to his face, he nonetheless issued a reprieve, scaling back the demerits. McCain dodged expulsion a second time by convincing another midshipman to take the fall after McCain was caught with contraband.
As for his heroism as a POW, that too is a façade. McCain endured a great deal of cruelty and deserves our respect and compassion for that ordeal. But the “name, age and serial number” image isn’t true. Dickinson:
Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. “I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital,” he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. “I had to tell them,” he insisted to Dramesi, “or I would have died in bed.”
Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain’s service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot’s behavior as heroic — “he wasn’t exceptional one way or the other” — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. “This business of my country before my life?” Dramesi says. “Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he’d be dead.”
X. Mr. Ethical only came into existence after Mr. Business as Usual got caught:
After he was sent to Washington, McCain and his family got in tight with Charles Keating, one of the poster kids in the savings and loan scandal.
Rolling Stone:
McCain and his family took at least nine free trips at Keating’s expense, and vacationed nearly every year at the mogul’s estate in the Bahamas. There they would spend the days yachting and snorkeling and attending extravagant parties in a world McCain referred to as “Charlie Keating’s Shangri-La.” Keating also invited Cindy McCain and her father to invest in a real estate venture for which he promised a 26 percent return on investment. They plunked down more than $350,000.
When the feds began closing in on Keating, McCain and four other senators went in to plead the goon’s case.
The senators who participated in the effort would come to be known as the Keating Five.
“Senate historians were unable to find any instance in U.S. history that was comparable, in terms of five U.S. senators meeting with a regulator on behalf of one institution,” says Bill Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, who attended the second meeting. “And it hasn’t happened since.”
In other words, Mr. Rectitude only got that way after nearly destroying his career by running around with a crook who, with some valuable clutch assists from McCain, cost U.S. taxpayers $3 billion.
Are there really only ten reasons to dump McCain? I’d love to hear your further nominations. And as always, corrections, criticisms and comments are welcome.
10:43 PM
John McCain is still dodging Politico
The other day John McCain ran away from a Politico reporter who tried to ask him why the famously mavericky senator is now denying he ever was such a thing.
Currently in D.C., per this Politico piece, there’s apparently speculation that McCain may break with the GOP in its efforts to stop the Obama administration from reforming the financial industries.
There’s no real evidence in the story Mccain might actually do that, but in any case he’s still skulks away whenever he’s asked something:
Many lobbyists say they are watching Obama’s former presidential rival — perhaps the most unusual of the unusual suspects — because he’s engaged in a heated Arizona Republican primary with former Rep. J. D. Hayworth. Financial observers have concluded that McCain’s vote will depend entirely on his analysis of how it plays among Arizona primary voters.
“If McCain decides that doing this will help him beat J.D. Hayworth, he’ll do it,” says one.
McCain formed an unlikely alliance with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to propose reinstating the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banking from investment banking. That law was repealed in the late 1990s, and many critics say it allowed for the growth of mammoth and risky investment banks. Fully reinstating the law would be further than the Obama administration has proposed.
But for now, Wall Street can breathe easy. Asked if he or other Republicans might vote for the bill, McCain offered a terse “no” and stepped quickly into an elevator.
5:45 PM
John McCain, the self-hating maverick
The imploding senator get nailed by Politico in a Capitol hallway encounter:
When POLITICO asked McCain about the contradiction at the Capitol this week, the Arizona Republican grew visibly irritated and snapped: “I’ve been called a thousand things. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”
He said 48 percent of the homeowners in his state are underwater on their mortgages. He said he’s always “done what’s best for my state and the nation.” Then he said it again, adding, “People can consider me whatever they want.”
And then he darted into the Senate chamber without explaining himself further.
6:46 PM
Jon Stewart on John McCain: "The currency of his soul is utterly worthless"
The Daily Show rips into McCain:
8:15 AM
John McCain: Not so mavericky after all
In the new Newsweek, there’s a look at John McCain’s re-election campaign. In it, McCain runs away from himself as fast as he can:
“Maverick” is a mantle McCain no longer claims; in fact, he now denies he ever was one. “I never considered myself a maverick,” he told me. “I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.” Yet here was Palin, urging her fans four times in 15 minutes to send McCain the Maverick back to Washington.
Politico talked to J.D. Hayworth after the Newsweek article was published:
“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.”
5:34 PM
John McCain, pouting
John McCain after the weekend’s health care vote:
“There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year. They have poisoned the well in what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.”
McCain used to be the guy who said he’d put the country first. Now he pouts when he doesn’t get his way.
At the White House press briefing today, Robert Gibbs said McCain was acting like a six-year-old:
“The notion that you don’t get what you want, [so] you’re not going to cooperate on anything else is not a whole lot different than I might hear from a 6-year-old,” [Gibbs] said during a White House press briefing today. “It doesn’t work well for my six-year-old…I doubt it works well in the United States Senate.”
4:50 PM
Jeff Flake: "Uh, I guess I was wrong!"
From a New York Times article on the Office of Congressional Ethics:
“They had some pretty serious investigating,” said Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, an opponent of earmarks who voted against creating Mr. Wise’s office but has since offered praise. “There is an impact, and it was certainly felt in this case.”
10:22 AM
Mitt Romney coming to a Borders tomorrow
Romney, like John McCain, is a former GOP presidential contender who over the course of his career has, once in a great while, taken a moderate political position on this or that issue.
As a consequence he’s been forced to do ideological cartwheels to appeal to the frothing base of the party to try to get its 2012 nomination.
He’s also a member of the Mormon Church, which raises money from its members and instead of using it to help the poor or disadvantaged spends it on political campaigns to take away right from gays and lesbians. “Marriage is under attack!” Romney said on Fox recently. (He’s also against the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”)
Romney’s new book is the pugnaciously titled No Apology. He’s signing it at 7 tomorrow night, at the Biltmore Borders, at 24th and Camelback.
4:43 PM
J.D. zings McCain!
Finally, a little life in the candidacy of the man PHXated has its hopes on to knock John McCain out of the senate and then be a vulnerable GOP nominee in the general so the state has at least a chance to be represented from someone in the reality based community.
It’s an ad labeling John McCain a nominee for “Best Conservative Actor.”
Because, see, he only acts like a conservative. Get it?
McCain’s response, according to Dan Nowicki’s blog:
“Ex-Congressman J.D. Hayworth should immediately apologize and and take down his latest online ad, which is an outrageous offense to John McCain’s lifetime of honorable service to our state and nation, and insulting to Native Americans here in Arizona and across America," said Shiree Verdone, McCain’s campaign manager. "Mr. Hayworth is welcome to debate the challenges facing our state and nation, but this kind of character assassination has no place in the Republican Party, and Mr. Hayworth should ashamed of his campaign for running it.”
Now, if anything the ad would be insulting only to Pandorans, right? For McCain, though, the association would doubly sting, because Pandorans are the ultimate tree-huggers.
Anway, the ad also exposes how difficult it is to support the bozo-er of two bozos, running for the nominee of a group of backward as the Arizona Republican Party.
McCain’s problem isn’t that he’s a fake conservative. He’s a fake maverick, a fake moderate and a fake compromiser. The only reason he started departing from the GOP line was after he got caught in the Keating Five scandal, which is to say, after he got exposed as being a typical moralizing-on-the-outside, corrupt-on-the-inside Republican.
He went “mavericky” to distract attention from his crookedness.
New ad idea for J.D.: “For John Mccain, integrity is the real unobtanium!”
Nowicki also says that the Hayworth camp has fiddled with the ad to make it more Avataresque, here.
4:04 PM
Dumb Arizonan of the week!
Honors go to state Rep. Debbie Lesko, who just had a bill get out of the key state committee. The bill would essentially evaporate the state’s Corporation Commission’s renewable energy goals by the simple expedient of classifying nuclear and hydroelecric power as renewable.
Besides being dumb, bad policy, bad for the environment, and bad for the country’s future, the idea is .. bad for the state’s economy:
A legislative proposal that passed a House committee on Tuesday could quash a solar panel manufacturer’s plans to open a plant in Goodyear.
Officials with Suntech Power Holdings said passage of House Bill 2701 would force the company to reconsider the plant, which is set to open with about 75 employees in September.
“Passage of this bill will force us to reconsider our decision to put a factory in Arizona, moving those jobs and the accompanying tax base to another state,” said Steve Chadima, vice president of external affairs for Suntech.
9:33 PM
McCain still supports "Don't ask, don't tell"
Barack Obama in his State of the Union address last night said he would “work toward” ending the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy. John McCain immediately said he still supported it:
“This successful policy has been in effect for over 15 years, and it is well understood and predominantly supported by our military at all levels,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, in a news release. “At a time when our Armed Forces are fighting and sacrificing on the battlefield, now is not the time to abandon the policy.”
McCain didn’t mention the thousands of gays, both men and women, in the military “fighting and sacrificing on the battlefield” the policy threatens every day. McCain’s wife, Cindy, recently appeared in magazine ads decrying the recent California anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment.
1:07 AM
John and Cindy's very continental relationship
Little noticed in all of the Hillary Clinton-Sarah Palin-Harry Reid hullabaloo surrounding the publication of the book Game Change are some tidbits about John McCain’s home life.
The book is the story of the 2008 presidential campaign, done via a raft of off-the-record interviews by reporters Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. (It lacks notes, too, reviewers say.)
Here’s a passage from the review of the book in today’s NYT that probably has the McCains’ neighbors at 24th and Camelback talking:
Mr. Halperin and Mr. Heilemann write, for instance, that the strategist John Weaver suspected the rumor Cindy McCain had a “long-term boyfriend” in Arizona “was rooted in truth,” and that the McCains “fought in front of others, during small meetings and before large events, to the amazement and discomfort of the staff.” The authors say that Mrs. McCain accused the senator of ruining her life, that she never wanted him to run again for president, and that “when it came time to film campaign videos of the couple, the camera crews had to roll for hours to capture a few minutes of warmth.”
10:57 PM
Vernon Parker and Planned Parenthood
Vernon Parker, who’s running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, has taken a strong stand on …
The state budget crisis? Its abysmal education standings? An intractable immigration impasse? The crushing societal problems caused by an unwinnable war on drugs?
No, women who need an abortion. Parker started the debate by trying to score a quick political point among the GOP anti-abortion nuts by criticizing his opponent, Gov. Jan Brewer, for having a fundraiser at the home of a Planned Parenthood official.
The letter, published on Sonoran Alliance:
I cannot support an organization that lobbies the legislature and courts on behalf of one of the most gruesome procedures imaginable, partial birth abortion.
Planned Parenthood has consistently lobbied against middle-of-the-road reform such as parental consent, parental notification, informed consent and a waiting period. By any reasonable standard, Planned Parenthood is far outside the mainstream of public opinion on all these issues.
Believe me when I say some of the conversations I’ve had with anti-choice men about late term abortion have been jaw droppers. They really do think we women, if left up to our own devices, will wait until we are 8 months pregnant and then casually decide to terminate it because we need to fit into a prom dress or to go on a jaunt to Barbados. They truly, honestly, believe women are dumber than dirt and have the moral and ethical fortitude of alley cats.
Vernon suggests he doesn’t trust women very much when he whinges about parental notification and waiting periods, calling them “middle of the road”. Yup, it’s just like how they make men wait 24 hours and sit through a lecture before they get Viagra or a vasecto… Oh wait, they don’t.
Left unmentioned: That sort of Planned Parenthood person would host a fundraiser for a Republican governor of Brewer’s antediluvian philosophies.
7:00 AM
Janet Napolitano's image is taking hits
So says Politico. Leaving aside the Republican carping after the foiled Christmas Day terrorist attack, others are questioning her oversight:
who closely watch policy developments at DHS say they’re still waiting for real action from the new leader.“The agency seems to be on autopilot, pretty much following the ideas of the previous team (to the extent they had any). Even simple steps, like getting rid of the idiotic color code or ending DHS’s silly double clearance for new hires have eluded the new secretary,” said James Lewis, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who said he dismisses the partisan attacks on Napolitano.
“It’s no secret that DHS has problems. There needs to be visible progress towards fixing them, and we haven’t seen any,” he said. “The lack of fresh thinking worries me. She needs to reset the agency, not just accept the inheritance and make it work smoothly.”
As for the Republicans, the lowest hit of all came from John Kyl and John McCain:
Republican critics, who already had Napolitano in their sights, spared no words in criticizing her — and show no inclination to stop.
One of them was her home-state senator, Republican Jon Kyl, who told reporters in Arizona that he no longer feels “totally safe” with his former governor at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security. Kyl was flanked at the Phoenix news conference by fellow Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.
On the other hand she gets a sympathetic portrait from Maureen Dowd in the NYT this a.m.:
Janet Napolitano and I hadn’t planned to spend New Year’s Eve together.
But there we were on this soggy Thursday, sitting in her office on the outskirts of the city, beside a big, black leather saddle that was a gift from the governor of Sonora, Mexico, when Napolitano was governor of Arizona.
I was working on the last night of the decennium horribile dictu, so I had tried to think of who else might also be burning the midnight oil instead of clinking the midnight bubbly.
The answer was obvious.
7:00 AM
The McCain push poll
A push poll is essentially a survey conducted by a pollster trying to get a fore-ordained conclusion. You do it by including disparaging information about one candidate in the questions. The process works for you in two ways: You can good poll numbers to crow about, and you’ve spread negative information about your opponent.
Last month, you’ll recall, a poll from Rasmussen, an established pollster, had John McCain and J.D. Hayworth running within a few points of each other in a potential matchup for the Republican senatorial primary next year.
The McCain organization, horrified at those numbers hanging over him, no doubt commissioned a more friendly poll, from a right-wing group called Tarrance, to combat it.
In the Republic the other day, Dan Nowicki did a story about it. Unsurprisingly, it showed McCain with a 20-point lede over a potential Hayworth challenge.
While Nowicki made it clear at the top it was a Republican poll, the hedline didn’t (in the print edition), and you had to read to the end of the article before you found out that the poll did smear Heyworth in the questions.
The pollster’s line is that McCain was winning before the questioners started disparaging Hayworth.
Still, I think the story should have led with the fact that it was a push poll. And Nowicki should have asked the pollster who specifically paid for it.
That said, he also didn’t report what to me was a big difference between the two polls. The Rasmussen one was a “robo poll” that questioned about 600 Arizonans via automated calling. The Tarrance one asked the same number by a live person over the phone. The latter is the superior process.
7:00 AM