A Stitch in Haste

I have admittedly not blogged much recently about John McCain. My priorities lied elsewhere — very "elsewhere."

That will of course now change. In the meantime, here is some good recent McCainBlogging by others:

--Justin Logan on McCain's mentally unstable hyper-militarism, both abroad ("Bomb Bomb Iran") and at home ("those who claim their liberty but not their duty to the civilization that ensures it live a half-life").

--Hodak Value also chimes in on "Ein Volk, Ein Maverick, Ein McCain":

John McCain is all about getting elected. No one gets this far in politics by accident, without being acutely, intensely aware of where their personal interests intersect with the voter's willingness to hand them power — not McCain or Romney or Hillary or Obama. Each of these politicians has survived this far in an extraordinarily demanding tournament for power by selling the interests that motivate them as somehow more noble and worthy than yours or mine. Amazingly enough, they achieved this by disguising their self-interest as "something larger than our self-interests." And, more amazingly enough, tens of millions of individuals buy it.

In other words: "John McCain, Politician."

--Matt Welch on the Great McCain Contradiction:

But there's a bizarre disconnect in the warm embrace between McCain and the electorate's mavericks. They hate the Iraq war, while he's willing to fight it for another century. The most pro-war presidential candidate in a decade is winning the 2008 GOP nomination thanks to the antiwar vote.

How much of that is due to the media "maverick" myth remains unclear.

--Dalia Lithwick on the kind of judges President McCain would nominate (hint: second verse same as the first).

--Alan Reynolds on why it's myopic for libertarians to praise McCain's lip service to earmark and pork reform given his hawkish love of military spending (not to mention military using) and his likely willingness to "compromise" on tax hikes, especially scrapping the Social Security wage cap.

I will of course be turning my attention to McCain much more frequently going forward.