a huh? moment

[piranha]

so some right-wing blogger asked other right-wing bloggers to make a list of between 1-12 people who are their least favourites on the right; politicians, talk show hosts, pundits, preachers, bloggers, anything goes (anyone but david duke and fred phelps who were considered shoo-ins).  45 responded.  here's the resultant list (# of votes in parentheses):

George Voinovich (4)
Arnold Schwarzenegger (4)
Ralph Reed (4)
Mitt Romney (4)
Kevin Phillips (4)
Bob Novak (4)
Trent Lott (4)
Rush Limbaugh (4)
Katherine Harris (4)
Tom DeLay (4)
Duke Cunningham (4)
Tucker Carlson (4)
Michael Bloomberg (4)
Debbie Schlussel (5)
Michelle Malkin (5)
Dennis Hastert (5)
James Dobson (6)
Ted Stevens (7)
Olympia Snowe (7)
Bill Frist (7)
Andrew Sullivan (9)
Bill O'Reilly (10)
Chuck Hagel (10)
Jerry Falwell (14)
Lincoln Chafee (15)
Ann Coulter (17)
Arlen Specter (19)
Michael Savage (22)
Pat Robertson (22)
John McCain (26)
Pat Buchanan (26)

i see so many of my own least favourites here, and that warms the cockles of my bleeding liberal heart.

but wow, john mccain?  WTF?

(via the blogometer)

Comments

re: john mccain

[eagle]

McCain has been pandering hard to the right wing and "supporting the President" all over the place, probably in preparation for another Presidential run. In the process, he's assured that I'll never vote for him; he is, at best, an opportunistic liar.

Re: john mccain

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

And that's, more or less, why he's on the list, I bet. Right-wingers don't like opportunistic liars any more than left-wingers do.

He was popular on both the left and the right for a while, then started acting sleazy enough that he lost both.

Re: john mccain

[jodawi.livejournal.com]

a theory:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,206282,00.html

Re: john mccain

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

urm ... i boycott faux news. got an alternate source?

Re: john mccain

[jodawi.livejournal.com]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/the_bases_lovehate_relationshi.html

Re: john mccain

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

he was popular on the left for a while because of his (newly discovered) liberal ideas, because liberals like themselves a maverick, and because he was sticking it to bush, whom many liberals despise with a passion approaching republican hatred of clinton. also, desperation -- better a moderate republican in 2004 than the one we've got or his political heirs. the pandering is a large factor for the end of the love affair here, yeah.

xiphias said:
Right-wingers don't like opportunistic liars any more than left-wingers do.

hahahahahhahahaa. OMG, that hurt.

no, i think plenty of right-ringers are ok with opportunistic liars, in fact that's one of the reasons why i am so often upset with right-wingers; their continued support for people who lie through their teeth in order to get their agenda taken care of. lying is fine, opportunism is fine, as long as it's done to further a purely conservative agenda. the ends all too often justify the means.

but mccain betrayed the tribe; he criticized progress in iraq before it had become acceptable, he is for comprehensive immigration reform (and not of the kind that most right-wingers want), he pushed campaign finance reform until it came out of everybody's ears, his views on education look leftish, he's anti-torture (ie. soft on terrorists).

so really, the main reason why republicans would like him at all is that he's tough on government spending (though talk about opportunistic liars: republicans are as porky as democrats, despite all their talk about the evils of it).

onto the pandering. he's been trying hard to get back into their good graces by shouting "i support the president" at every opportunity. and he's made nicey-nice with the religious right-wingers who slimed him during the last election. for one, he's behind the curve by too much of a margin; the time for supporting the president and pandering to the fundamentalists was more than 2 years ago; by now there is plenty of criticism of both within the mainstream of the party, and the pandering is now viewed as distasteful -- but it alone would never be enough to oust an otherwise promising candidate. while underneath, of course, he's still got those damn liberal ideas, and can therefore not be trusted; a true-blue mccain might spring from this one after election.

note that arlen specter, lincoln chafee and olympia snowe are also on the list, albeit lower -- but they're not engaging in extreme pandering. they're also not making a run for the presidency (though some people are trying to draft snowe). but they as well are too liberal for their party.

and so mccain's a RINO (republican in name only) taking the spotlight, and possibly the actual spot away from true republicans; he's got the highest profile of the disliked RINOs. i think that's probably sufficient to explain it.

i knew mccain had gotten himself further up on the republican shitlist, i just didn't know how much he was hated on -- and it appears that i just wasn't paying enough attention. now that i am looking at polls from way back, he'd been hated on by more than a third of republicans already by the last election (where he was running, remember). there was no pandering to the fundamentalists and bush at that point.