John McCain’s Naked Ambition
13 March 2006 6:13 pm by Taylor Marsh
John McCain's Naked Ambition
Via Ryan Lizza comes an interesting story about McCain, GOP money
man Grover Norquist and Jack Abramoff.
… … Reading the first details of the
Abramoff scandal in the papers, McCain decided to investigate. As it turned
out, he just happened to head the committee, Indian Affairs, with jurisdiction
over the juiciest political finance scandal since Watergate. And at the center
of it all just happened to be Norquist.McCain aides salivated. They whispered that the investigation
would destroy Norquist. McCain subpoenaed volumes of e-mails and donor records
from ATR. In the midst of the fight, the two sides elevated the hostility
to new heights. Norquist referred to McCain as “the nut-job from Arizona.”
As McCain's investigation reached its denouement,
rumors flew through Washington that his committee was sitting on a trove of
damning evidence. He seemed to have a gun to Norquist's head. And then …
nothing. … …
It seems John McCain is forgiving everybody, even Jerry Falwell,
a man he called a “force of evil.” But that was yesterday, when the
straight talk express still had wheels. Today, it's been relegated to the junk
yard, where better dreams of higher hopes and cleaner ambitions go to die.
The John McCain who is hell bent on being president has no more
illusions to that clean candidate stuff.
Something must have happened to John McCain's soul in South Carolina.
One can almost sympathize. Almost, except for the fact that the country and
media especially still think he's a maverick. Even his own party still buys
that propaganda. But to sell your soul for a crowd who sold you out seems a
bit brazen even for a politician, especially when there's no sure thing in sight.
Lizza has some great bomb throwing rhetoric in his piece. My favorite
is when Norquist said he didn't mean to call McCain a “nut-job.” What
he really meant to say was he's a “gun-grabbing, tax-increasing Bolshevik.”
That's my kind of feud.
However, now that Johnnie boy has signed on to the tax bill, something
he voted against in 2003, those days are gone.
But I'm with Josh Marshall and the crew over at Muckraker,
my new favorite site. Why did McCain let Norquist, a deathly enemy, off the hook?
There's muck to rake on that one, what you want to bet?
