Arizona GOP turns on McCain

The GOP civil war has a new victim: Sen. John McCain.

The Arizona Republican Party passed a resolution Saturday with a voice vote censuring McCain for his “long and terrible record of drafting, co-sponsoring and voting for legislation best associated with liberal Democrats,” and has said they will refuse to endorse or support McCain. According to the resolution, the Arizona GOP called out the long-time senator for supporting a so-called pathway to amnesty for immigrants, funding for Obamacare, and “assaults on the Constitution and 2nd amendment.”

“For too long, we have waited, hoping Senator McCain would return to our party’s values on his own,” the resolution states. “That has not happened.”

The resolution was introduced by Arizona District 30 Republican chairman Timothy Schwartz, who was able to bring the vote to the floor after getting 20% of the members present at the Arizona GOP meeting to sign his petition. “Our complaint is that John McCain is always working on the other side of the aisle, and never land on our side of the aisle,” Schwartz told Chris Matthews on msnbc Monday.

McCain, through a spokesman, has declined media inquires to comment. The 77-year-old has made a name for himself as a moderate “maverick” since he first joined the Senate in 1986.

Former Arizona senator and fellow Republican Jon Kyl dismissed the Arizona GOP’s stance and called the resolution “wacky.”

“Do these guys ever get elected? It’s John McCain who gets elected,” Kyl said in an interview with the Arizona Republic. “To say that John McCain doesn’t work with Republicans, doesn’t have a conservative voting record–that’s just baloney. I served with him in the Senate for 18 years, 26 years all together, and we didn’t always vote alike, but his record is very conservative. It’s just wacky to say otherwise.”

The Arizona GOP also voted Saturday on resolutions to support Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and tea party Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee.

So -- John McCain stood with the immigration reform package proposed by Obama ... and Bush before him. McCain is somehow associated with Obamacare ... which is what the Republicans like Gingrich were so proud of when it was called Romneycare.

Seems to me the party's leaving him rather than the other way around.

Who knows what's going on in the Republican party?  They don't know how to work through a single thought.

It's like I used to teach young lawyers working for my law firm: Watch out for the stupid ones...they'll get themselves into trouble, then lie, cheat and steal to get out of it.  Much safer working with a smart one.

But Republicans are not smart--not the noisy ones today.

Original Quill wrote:Who knows what's going on in the Republican party?  They don't know how to work through a single thought.

It's like I used to teach young lawyers working for my law firm: Watch out for the stupid ones...they'll get themselves into trouble, then lie, cheat and steal to get out of it.  Much safer working with a smart one.

But Republicans are not smart--not the noisy ones today.

No, and another thing I've notice since the end of the Bush years is that they don't seem to be nearly as coordinated. You still see the occasional evidence of talking points, of course, but I think the old Reagan rule about not bashing fellow Republicans in public is dead.

Not that I'm complaining; those coordinated messages are creepy  ::zomb:: ::zomb:: ::zomb:: 

Because he tends vote for what is essentially not always towing the party line? Oh the shame....how bloody well dare he!

SMH

The Republicans appear to be giving birth to a new party--ultra right, and clinging to the old Luddite view of things.  Smithonian capitalism.  Reaganesque sense of geopolitics.   You know, your grandfather's view of the world--farmers and artisans, with no improvements since 1830.  

The problem is that the Party is giving birth to an already weathered and wiskered, geriatric fetus.  That won't work.  You don't give birth to the old--it an abomination.  The last time we saw that sort of thing was Germany, 1933.  Yet, as we have just seen in Iraq, Republicans are likewise thinking torture, kidnapping and rape--the same stuff.  There's something afoot in history, and it's not good.

Quill and ben - did either of you get a spate of friggin robo-calls before state of union speech.....I admit I finally got so fed up I screamed eft off to then - hope they were recording