If facts mattered, McCain’s history would make him the kind of Republican that Palin would normally campaign against—and in order to build him up, she had to present an image of him that was in stark opposition to reality. (But then again, Palin’s a specialist at that sort of thing.)

Myth One: Palin told the crowd they needed to “send the maverick back to the United States Senate.” But the maverick John McCain—the guy who used to support cap-and-trade policies to fight global warming and opposed the Bush administration’s tax cuts on the basis that they would bust the budget—has given way to an ill-tempered old-timer who just wants to find a comfy stall inside today’s GOP stable.

Myth Two: Palin joked that McCain’s maverick ways “haven’t always won him friends in the Washington, D.C., elite machine.” But if anyone was friendly with the media elite and Democrats in Washington, it was McCain, who used to refer to the press as “my base.” How many Sundays go by when he’s not making the rounds on the talk shows?

McCain has mostly been lacking friends among the hard-right Republicans he’s now trying to win over, not among fantastical “elites.”

Myth Three: Palin credited McCain with putting Republican Scott Brown over the top in the Massachusetts Senate race, saying the pickup-driving pin-up was “a critical vote against big government.” But the pro-choice Brown was one of only four Senate Republicans to vote for a big-spending Democratic jobs bill last month and, as a state senator, supported a health-care reform bill that’s remarkable similar to the national one just passed by Democrats. That sounds like a RINO to us!

Myth Four: Palin said that McCain has “spent his entire career fighting for common-sense, conservative solutions that Arizona needs.” But that spin will come as a surprise to Arizona conservatives who have watched McCain work with libs to oppose drilling in ANWR, push for campaign-finance reform that recently got tossed by the courts and support an immigration-reform proposal that provided a path to citizenship for people who have entered the country illegally.

Politics is certainly about building myths. But shouldn’t the rhetoric have some relationship with reality?

via Sarah Palin and the Power of Myth | The Range: The Tucson Weekly’s Old Pueblog | Tucson Weekly.

Not in Palin/McCain World.

As some readers of this blog may know, I was fired by a right wing think tank called the National Center for Policy Analysis in 2005 for writing a book critical of George W. Bush’s policies, especially his support for Medicare Part D. In the years since, I have lost a great many friends and been shunned by conservative society in Washington, DC.

Now the same thing has happened to David Frum, who has been fired by the American Enterprise Institute. I don’t know all the details, but I presume that his Waterloo post on Sunday condemning Republicans for failing to work with Democrats on healthcare reform was the final straw.

Since, he is no longer affiliated with AEI, I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI “scholars” on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do.

It saddened me to hear this. I have always hoped that my experience was unique. But now I see that I was just the first to suffer from a closing of the conservative mind. Rigid conformity is being enforced, no dissent is allowed, and the conservative brain will slowly shrivel into dementia if it hasn’t already.

Sadly, there is no place for David and me to go. The donor community is only interested in financing organizations that parrot the party line, such as the one recently established by McCain economic adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin.

I will have more to say on this topic later. But I wanted to say that this is a black day for what passes for a conservative movement, scholarship, and the once-respected AEI.

via David Frum and the Closing of the Conservative Mind | Capital Gains and Games.

The Monday after Congress passed historic health care legislation was a dark day for the right wing. Wouldn’t you be upset if you were doomed to live in a communist dystopia? Is there even a point in living once Nancy Pelosi kills every baby in America and your grandmother?

And by “upset,” we mean certifiably insane. Here are the 10 most awesomely overwrought right-wing freakouts spurred by the passage of a bill that promises to extend coverage to tens of millions of the uninsured and curb some of the most inhumane abuses of the insurance industry…

via The 10 Most Outrageous Right-Wing Freakouts Over the Health Care Bill | | AlterNet.

You’ll have to click the link to see the list. And yes, I am laughing my arse off over here.

Dear President Obama: Please listen to Jon Stewart when he tells you it’s Fucking Chow Time.

To a degree unimaginable as recently as 2004 — when Karl Rove and George W. Bush ran a national campaign exploiting fear of gay people — there is now little political advantage to spewing homophobia. Indeed, anti-gay animus is far more likely to repel voters than attract them. This equation was visibly eating at Orrin Hatch, the Republican senator from Utah, as he vamped nervously with Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC last week, trying to duck any discernible stand on Mullen’s testimony. On only one point was he crystal clear: “I just plain do not believe in prejudice of any kind.”

Now that explicit anti-gay animus is an albatross, those who oppose gay civil rights are driven to invent ever loopier rationales for denying those rights, whether in the military or in marriage. Hatch, for instance, limply suggested to Mitchell that a repeal of “don’t ask” would lead to gay demands for “special rights.” Such arguments, both preposterous and disingenuous, are mere fig leaves to disguise the phobia that can no longer dare speak its name. If gay Americans are to be granted full equality, the flimsy rhetorical camouflage must be stripped away to expose the prejudice that lies beneath.

The arguments for preserving “don’t ask” have long been blatantly groundless. McCain — who said in 2006 that he would favor repealing the law if military leaders ever did — didn’t even bother to offer a logical explanation for his mortifying flip-flop last week. He instead huffed that the 1993 “don’t ask” law should remain unchanged as long as any war is going on (which would be in perpetuity, given Afghanistan). Colin Powell strafed him just hours later, when he announced that changed “attitudes and circumstances” over the past 17 years have led him to agree with Mullen. McCain is even out of step with his own family’s values. Both his wife, Cindy, and his daughter Meghan have posed for the current California ad campaign explicitly labeling opposition to same-sex marriage as hate.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet – NYTimes.com.

Click here to view the embedded video.

John McCain in 2006: “And I understand the opposition to it, and I’ve had these debates and discussions, but 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 because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to.”

John McCain in 2010: “I’m deeply disappointed in your statement, Secretary Gates. … your statement obviously is one which is clearly biased, without the view of Congress being taken into consideration.”

…

Frankly, Mr. McCain, I think your homophobia is very visible, as was your lack of good judgment during the previous presidential campaign in choose Palin as your running mate, as well as your involvement in the Keating Five, so I must conclude that your ill-informed opinions on any issue are and should be publicly seen as irrelevant.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cindy McCain, the wife of 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, and their daughter Meghan have posed for photos endorsing pro-gay marriage forces in California.

Mrs. McCain appears with silver duct tape across her mouth and “NOH8″ written on one cheek in a photo posted Wednesday to the Web site of NOH8, a gay rights group opposed to Proposition 8. The ballot measure passed by California voters in 2008 bans same-sex marriage.

The McCains’ daughter Meghan, who has been outspoken in her support for gay rights, has also endorsed NOH8. She appears with silver duct tape across her mouth and “NOH8″ on a cheek in a photo on her Twitter site.

Cindy McCain contacted NOH8 and offered to pose for the photo endorsement, the Web site said.

John McCain’s office said in a statement that the Arizona senator respects the views of members of his family but remains opposed to gay marriage.

via McCain’s wife, daughter back gay marriage movement – washingtonpost.com.

But the Republican switcheroo on Medicare is really in a league of its own.  Here’s a party that opposed Medicare viciously in the first place, routinely spoke out against it in the years that followed, was dedicated to gutting it in the 1990s, voted for major cuts in 1997, and has been using it as a cudgel ever since to get its base riled up over the future bankruptcy of America.  McCain himself proposed over a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts just 12 months ago.  But now?  Well, now it’s 2003 all over again and there are elections to think of.  So now they’re righteously opposed to cutting so much of a nickel out of Medicare spending, even if the cuts are aimed at waste, fraud, inefficient programs, and bad incentives.  It’s just jaw droppingly mendacious.

via Quote of the Day: The GOP’s Love Affair with Medicare | Mother Jones.

So when Democrats propose cuts, that leads to health care rationing, but when the Republicans do, it doesn’t?

Gotcha. *rolls eyes*

…the president’s national security adviser, former Marine Gen. James Jones, concerning the size of the terrorist threat from Afghanistan:

“The Al Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.”

Less than 100! And he is basing his conservative estimate on the best intelligence data available to our government. That means that Al Qaeda, for all practical purposes, does not exist in Afghanistan–so why are we having a big debate about sending even more troops to fight an enemy that has relocated elsewhere? Because of the blind belief, in the minds of those like John McCain, determined to “win” in Afghanistan, that if we don’t escalate, Al Qaeda will inevitably come back.

Why? It’s not like Al Qaeda is an evil weed indigenous to Afghanistan and dependent on its climate and soil for survival. Its members were foreign imports in the first place, recruited by our CIA to fight the Soviets because there were evidently not enough locals to do the job.

via A War of Absurdity.