NEWS JUNKIE POST
Feb 9, 2010 at 10:39 pmAnother Maverick Named McCain Rattles the GOP
Is Meghan McCain the new voice of the Republican Party? Oh, if only it could be so. It’s doubtful that the Party of No will be welcoming a young, vibrant voice any time soon. But that didn’t stop the daughter of former presidential candidate and Arizona Senator John McCain from getting all “mavericky” on The View Monday. She ripped into Tom Tancredo’s “innately racist” opening remarks at last weekend’s Tea Party convention during which the former Colorado congressman called for a civic literacy test for voters. The outspoken “Daily Beast” contributor who’s also a Twitter aficionado, said anyone who thinks the Tea Party movement isn’t turning off young people is “seriously smoking something. Period.”
McCain also blasted her dad’s former running mate, taking aim at Sarah Palin’s hypocrisy over the so-called ‘R’ word. Sarachuda demanded White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel’s’ ouster after a comment he made last August calling liberals who planned to boycott Democrats who didn’t support a public health insurance option,”f—ing retards” surfaced in an article. But when the de facto Grand Pooh bah of the GOP, Rush Limbaugh stuck his fat mouth into the discussion, calling out political correctness, saying on his show last week: “People are insulted because someone called a bunch of retards, retards, ” Palin called that “satire.” Did McCain bash Palin’s double standard? You betcha!
McCain, whose dad–in his re-election bid–faces a tough Tea Party endorsed candidate, former congressman J.D. Hayworth, clearly wants media attention. She’s got a book coming out in August; and told the Viewmeisters she’d gladly come back and reveal more then. Clever, girl, this Meghan McCain. She may be angling for a permanent seat on The View: she certainly beats Elizabeth Hasselbeck in the knowledge and personality departments. Maybe she even wants to run for office herself someday, though she’s nixed the notion in myriad interviews.
Still McCain may be taking her role as youth crusader a bit too far. She stepped into it a bit when in her effort to discredit Tancredo, she said, “Revolutions are started by young people, not sixty-five year old people talking about literacy tests and people who can’t spell the word vote.” As someone who is neither as young as twenty nor as old as sixty, that sounds a little agesist. And wrong. The average age of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was 45. Mao was in his late fifties when he organized the Chinese Revolution. Nelson Mandela was seventy-six when he took South Africa into the post Apartheid era. And what about Maggie Khun? The activist who spearheaded the movement against age discrimination was sixty-eight when she founded the Gray Panther Party.
For someone who is looking to lure young people into the Republican Party by quoting another wise older American, Maya Angelou, calling for us to celebrate that which unites us, Meghan McCain should embrace all people who seek positive change. Her enthusiasm may get the better of her sometimes, but Meghan McCain offers a refreshing Republican perspective. She’s pro-choice and pro Gay rights. She even posed, and got her mom Cindy to pose in a powerfully beautiful ad denouncing California’s Prop 8. This younger McCain, like her father ( before he thrust that pit bull with lipstick from Alaska onto the national stage) is the sort of Republican that Democrats could actually work with. That is, if the Party of No ever decides that doing the American people’s business is more important than crushing this President whose very existence seems to so infuriate them.
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Just wanted to correct an error in this post. Meghan McCain is pro-life. She has said so repeatedly.
Meg: her stance is a bit murky. When asked about it on “Larry King” she said: “I am personally pro-life, but I’m not going to judge someone who’s pro-choice.It’s not my place to judge other people and what they do with their body.” This sounds like most of us who are pro-choice.
While self righteous nitwittery remains an admired prerequisite for “young vibrant voices” among Liberals and is a stock in trade for The View, it remains suspect among conservatives.