Stacy McCain on John McCain: " Every Liberal’s Favorite Republican, and the Problem With ‘Bipartisan Reform’"

Politics is a team sport and, in a two-party system, there are no silver medals for a second-place finish. You either win, or you lose.

It does not behoove us to celebrate defeat and losers are not generally regarded as heroes in politics. John McCain was a loser, and the particular way he went about losing deserves to be studied as an example of what not to do in politics. So as the cable-news channels are filled today with glowing tributes to the deceased senator, permit me to remind readers of exactly why we hated the man during his life....

... deep in his heart, John McCain was always ashamed of being a Republican.

This is one of the enduring problems of the GOP, namely that many of its leading officials are embarrassed by their association with the party, in a way that no Democrat is ever made to feel. Because the liberal media operate a 24/7 character assassination campaign against Republicans, it takes a strong mind to resist this psyops propaganda, to maintain a sense of political self-esteem while opposing the Democrat agenda....

All that is necessary for any Republican to win praise from the liberal media is for him to endorse their negative opinion of the GOP, and this is how John McCain became every liberal’s favorite Republican.

This is not how winners play the game. Nor can the kind of “bipartisan reform” agenda with which John McCain made his name synonymous ever do anything to help elect Republicans. There are three basic problems with “bipartisan reform,” first, that GOP officials who support such efforts are always doing so to curry favor with the liberal media; second, that these “reform” schemes always have the political effect of alienating the Republican Party’s conservative grassroots; and third, that Democrats will never support any “reform” unless they believe it will help them win elections (and thus obtain greater power) in the future...

“Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining.”

Don’t rip me off, sell me out, screw me over, and expect me to believe that your deliberate act of betrayal was somehow unintentional.

This was what made John McCain so unpopular with conservatives. He claimed to be acting on high-minded principles, even while it was obvious that he was merely seeking to enhance his own personal reputation by pandering to liberals through his advocacy of “bipartisan reform.”

Politics isn’t everything in life, but if you choose to become a politician, you should expect to be judged by a political standard. Because politics is a team sport, a good politician is always trying to help his team win, and should be judged by his success in doing so. This means, of course, that a truly successful politician can expect to be hated by the opposing party, the way Democrats hated Reagan. One nowadays is often told how Reagan was able to “compromise” with congressional Democrats like Tip O’Neill, but that could be explained by two factors: First, that Reagan won two landslide elections and thus was negotiating from a position of strength, and second, that the Democrat congressional majority in those days included many moderate and conservative members.

As I frequently tell people, in 2008 I voted for Sarah Palin and the old guy she ran with.