In news that is likely causing Giuliani, Romney and Gingrich to jump for joy, The Hill is reporting that John McCain almost left the Republican Party to join the Democratic Party shortly before Jim Jeffords left the GOP and became and independent. A senior McCain staffer approached a Democratic congressman and initiated talks about the conditions — pertaining primarily to seniority — necessary for McCain to bolt the GOP.
In interviews with The Hill this month, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and ex-Rep. Tom Downey (D-N.Y.) said there were nearly two months of talks with the maverick lawmaker following an approach by John Weaver, McCain’s chief political strategist.
Democrats had contacted Jeffords and then-Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) in the early months of 2001 about switching parties, but in McCain’s case, they said, it was McCain’s top strategist who came to them.
At the end of their March 31, 2001 lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Bethesda, Md., Downey said Weaver asked why Democrats hadn’t asked McCain to switch parties.
Downey, a well-connected lobbyist, said he was stunned.
“You’re really wondering?” Downey said he told Weaver. “What do you mean you’re wondering?”
“Well, if the right people asked him,” Weaver said, according to Downey, adding that he responded, “The calls will be made. Who do you want?” Weaver this week said he did have lunch with Downey that spring, pointing out that he and Downey “are very good friends.”
Weaver, of course, denies this characterization of events, “though Weaver acknowledged this week that the senator did talk to Democrats about leaving the GOP.”
The Hill’s Bob Cusack documents the efforts Democrats made over the months following the Weaver/Downey lunch to create the right groundwork to get McCain to switch sides, including figuring out which Democrats needed to ask him (John Edwards was one candidate. Daschle, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy and Rep. Downey remained involved in working on McCain’s switch. Downey says that McCain’s switch appeared to be “almost a certain deal.” In the end McCain passed on the switch and now is running for the Republican nomination for president.
Jonathan Singer gets the moral of the story right:
So with this new revelation, I continue to firmly stand by my previously expressed sentiment that “McCain has proven himself to not be a man of integrity or genuineness but instead just another calculating politician willing to sell out his beliefs in the hopes of winning an election” — though would perhaps reformulate the second half of the statement about selling out beliefs because it is not entirely clear to me that the John McCain holds any convictions whatsoever.
McCain’s willingness to shift his positioning to whatever benefits him most is evident. That’s been clear since the moment he decided to sell himself out to George W. Bush, which is probably around the time that he turned down a move to the Democratic Party. In so doing he became on of Bush’s most ardent supporters (with occasional forays into feigned independence). He even hired some of the Bush cronies who smeared him in 2000, costing him the South Carolina primary.
These are actions of a man who will put political victory of personal consistency. He has no pride, for if he did he would not bring the goons who created push-polls that said he had an illegitimate black baby onto his staff. We know more about John McCain today than we did yesterday, but not a whole lot. Another detail has been added that adds color to an increasingly muddled and poorly drawn picture.
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1 Response to “McCain Almost Bolted in 2001”
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[...] I posted on The Hill story last week. McCain’s staffer John Weaver played a significant role as the middle man in negotiations with Democratic Senate leadership in 2001. But trying to switch parties and retain seniority is slightly less of a transgression than petitioning the opposing party’s nominee to join his presidential ticket so as to run against your party’s sitting president and vice president. Singer writes: For many Republicans, it has been bad enough that John McCain has voted and worked with Democrats against the majority of Republican Senators on a number of occasions in recent years. For Republicans, I would imagine that reports that he approached the Democrats about leaving the Senate GOP caucus in 2001 represent a borderline unpardonable offense. But it seems that reaching out to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to talk about running on that party’s ticket would be tantamount to the highest form of political treason to Republicans. [...]
Left by Emboldened » Blog Archive » Kerry: McCain Asked To Be My VP
April 3, 2007 at 9:57am