Is the old John McCain back?
The fiery, independent version of the Republican senator from Arizona took to the floor of the Senate Wednesday morning. Demanding “straight talk,” Mr. McCain accused conservatives of abandoning reason by opposing the House Republican leader’s plan to resolve the debt crisis.
Mr. McCain mocked Tea Party-allied Republicans in the House for believing — wrongly, he said — that President Obama and Democrats will get the blame for a default if Republicans refuse to increase the nation’s debt ceiling.
By that flawed logic, “Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced budget amendment and reform entitlements and the Tea Party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth,” he said, quoting a Wall Street Journal editorial.
“This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into G.O.P. nominees,” he jeered, referring to two losing Tea Party candidates for the Senate in 2010.
Mr. McCain’s comments recall the visage of the senator prior to the 2008 presidential campaign against President Obama, when Mr. McCain eventually abandoned his “straight talk” mantra and ran as a more conventional conservative. And during Mr. McCain’s reelection campaign in 2010, he downplayed the “maverick” label that he had long proudly worn in the Senate.
But on Wednesday morning, it looked like the maverick had returned.
Mr. McCain assailed the conservative Republicans in the House who are threatening passage of the debt cutting plan by the House speaker, John A. Boehner, calling their political logic “bizarro” and noting sarcastically that they have only been in office a short time.
“Maybe some people who have only been in this body for six or seven months or so really believe that,” he said. “Others know better. Others know better.”
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/john-mccain-vs-the-tea-party/#more-160151
