He didn’t learn to be a Backstabber only after becoming a Senator, but learned it as a child.

I’m giving the old white-haired dude a pass on this one. Rather than leaving Senator Lieberman flopping in the breeze, McCain could have just been avoiding any MSM gotchas by not taking a stand on every last question. He doesn’t have to emanate profundity about everything all the time – ya know.

As I stated over at TIW:

I viewed the press conference myself and McCain did not throw anyone under the bus. If one were to pay attention, McCain was just accused of starting the war in Georgia and the press was trying to goad McCain. McCain doesn’t goad.

When you study hie verbiage presented, what he told the press was to kiss his ass.

McCain does have issues but when people deliberately try to “throw McCain under the bus” in some childish rant that he isn’t conservative enough – and he certainly isn’t – objectivity gets thrown under the bus.

Grow up and take everything into consideration. We have enough problems as it is.

I guess my 53 years on the planet and fighting wars has given me the ability to burn thru the chaffe and recognize the willful bashing McCain because he isn’t conservative enough.

Simply amazing.

Yeah. Let’s let Czarbama in the White House so he can enact thru Executive Order the Fairness Doctrine and then every conservative voice and blog will vanish.

Yep. GREAT plan.

Pathetic.

The way to handle a question like that is to say, “Hey, Joe can speak for himself. I’m proud to have his support, but I don’t tell him what he can or cannot say, or put words in his mouth. If you’ve got a problem with something Joe said, take it up…

“Under the bus, Joe.”

Actually, it is. I noticed you were afraid to quote it.

Indeed, your dutiful regurgitation of something that was deliberately kept as ambiguous as possible to reflect as badly on the Republican presidential candidate intimidated the hell out of me.

“So let’s look – verbatum – at what you want McCain to reject”

If you can point out where I said that I wanted McCain to reject something by all means do so. Otherwise please do not ascribe a course of action that I have not advocated to me.

So yes, let’s look – verbatum verbatim – at what you want McCain to reject What was ACTUALLY said… Since Michelle didn’t link to any source that cited the quotations I dug it up:

At his news conference today, Mr. McCain was asked whether his own comments in support of Georgia had not made the situation worse. He dismissed the question, saying this was not a time for “partisanship and sniping” between campaigns but about a human tragedy. He was then asked if Mr. Lieberman had not injected politics with his comments in Teaneck.

“I think that whatever we think at the moment, that we can all reserve that for a future time,” Mr. McCain said softly. “And I think judgments will be made about how we handled this situation, how we approached the situation in Iraq and how much experience and knowledge and background means in selecting the American people’s decision about who should be commander in chief.”
[…]
Asked again whether Mr. Lieberman had politicized the issue and if he was calling on his campaign to refrain from such comments, Mr. McCain said:

He said that when the crisis is resolved and troops are withdrawn, “then we’ll move on back to the back and forth of campaigning and comments back and forth.”

“You can deny that is what was said, but you’d only be self-deluding”

Gee, as it turns out, and let me quote it “- verbatim –” (good lord)

“if you read the statements from the beginning, Senator McCain and Senator Obama, one had kind of moral neutrality to it, that comes I think from inexperience. The other, Senator McCain, was strong and clear and principled and put America where America always wants to be.”

Was not quoted or, more importantly rejected.

“McCain simply fumbled the ball on this when he could have passed for an easy touchdown.”

According to someone who skewed the story. Whether or not he should have hammered it home that Obama is a boob rather then stating that politics should take a back seat I don’t know. It might have looked like he was trying too hard to capitalize on other peoples tragedies.

” As I said, you should be on watch for self-delusion.”

You have something on your nose again.

Bill Grant said:

purplepeep said:
“And let’s look at exactly what McCain disagreed with:”

Well, no, that isn’t “exactly” what McCain disagreed with.

Actually, it is. I noticed you were afraid to quote it. So let’s look – verbatum – at what you want McCain to reject:

“if you read the statements from the beginning, Senator McCain and Senator Obama, one had kind of moral neutrality to it, that comes I think from inexperience. The other, Senator McCain, was strong and clear and principled and put America where America always wants to be.”

You can deny that is what was said, but you’d only be self-deluding. I would add that advising McCain to reject his own worthiness as a leader in international affairs is not just counter-productive, but outright goofy.

Lieberman is actually going to Georgia (along with Lindsey Graham) on McCain’s behest…

That’s certainly a waste of time after McCain claimed he cannot comment on the situation because it’s “political” and because politicians disagree (how awful). He handed Obama a bat to beat him over the head with on that account.

If he back-pedals from his current no-comment position – as he surely will have to – he’ll be rightly skewed for flip-flopping. Obama and surrogates will be leading that charge.

McCain simply fumbled the ball on this when he could have passed for an easy touchdown.

the NY times which increasingly difficult to distinguish from this blog.

As I said, you should be on watch for self-delusion.

However, in the interest of following McCain’s speak-no-evil kumbaya bipartisanship lead, you are obviously welcome to intervene in the ongoing blog entries where Michelle takes apart The One and stand up in the Obamessiahs defense so as not to upset him, the Dems, the media or to whomever McCain is defering.

But with McCain having took steady aim at foot and fired (at his own ability to lead), I don’t know that you’d really wanna follow his lead in so doing.

McCain’s smart enough to realize that this is going to be a long standing issue that goes beyond our election cycle and America doesn’t need to be boxed into a policy that occurs because politicians are jockying for votes. American’s who are paying attention to this issue can clearly see the difference between the two stances without having to make this an election issue.

Quite frankly, I feel like both Obama and McCain should shut up and let the current president handle this. Anything less than a consistent message shows weakness to the commies, who will use this split to their advantage.

As for “theotherside’s” comments, there is no comparison between Lincoln and Obama. (You clearly forget that Lincoln was a VP candidate before being a presidential candidate); hence he was on the national seen for a substantially longer period than Obama, and was intimately involved in the most pressing issue of the 19th century (not to mention the fact that we wasn’t afraid of a debate, hiding behind puff pieces rather than answering questions, and pimping out his children even after he said it was a mistake)

Alphonse said:
McCain in here in a war mode, calling for all Americans to rally around his plans to get us into a thermonuclear war with Russia

He said that did he? Actually I believe he is saying there is not much we can do for Georgia but we have to reassess our relationship with Russia–as in we shouldn’t have one. Mother Russia is on the march to regain her lost empire and we dare not be too close. But if we cut off all flights and ships from America/Russia, stopped all dollar exhanges and expelled all Russian passports from the United States we would all be better off for it.

But if you have a link please share.

“And let’s look at exactly what McCain disagreed with:”

Well, no, that isn’t “exactly” what McCain disagreed with. Liebermann spoke those remarks the day before even according to this hit piece that is now being echoed by the NY times which increasingly difficult to distinguish from this blog.

Lieberman is actually going to Georgia (along with Lindsey Graham) on McCain’s behest… Or is it going to be argued here that McCain is just trying to get poor “Liebs” (excuse me while I puke) killed because the bus didn’t quite do it?

Seriously, isn’t there enough wrong to latch on to without tossing out these completely skewed and unfair stories?

mistressjustice said:
McCain has shown the ability to slam and attack Obama repeatedly throughout this summer. He’ll continue to aggressively attack him until the election.

I’d be surprised if he did, MsJ. As I mentioned upthread a few of his people administered a good pounding recently with some effective ads that took down Obama;s poll numbers. But McCain himself just doesn’t seem to have the killer political instinct.

In the primaries he got nasty with Romney, but that was just for a bit and he came off as a cranky jerk. I’m thinking here of a debate in particular where he repeatedly and intentionally misrepresented Romney on Iraq.

He doesn’t seem to be aware that the key is keeping Obama on the defense all the time. Even Bush I, not exactly an election-warrior, was able to pound the daylights out of a Dukakis 16 point summer lead with simple things like the pledge of alligience issue in ‘88.