| | Op-Ed: McCain's 'volatile temper' may derail Straight Talk Express
Ron Brynaert
Published:
Thursday January 18, 2007
 Columnist Sidney Blumenthal has written about the "fighting side" of Senator John McCain (AZ-R), who most pundits consider the frontrunner in the race to become the Republican Party's 2008 presidential candidate, wondering if his "volatile temper" that the media often overlooks may end up derailing the "Straight Talk Express."
The senator's "volatile temper" sometimes surfaces in the form of derisive obscenities levelled at his opponents and colleagues, according to Blumenthal, who once served as a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton.
"McCain's political colleagues, however, know another side of the action hero -- a volatile man with a hair-trigger temper, who shouted at Sen. Ted Kennedy on the Senate floor to 'shut up,' called his fellow Republican senators 'shithead,' 'fucking jerk,' 'asshole,' and joked in 1998 at a Republican fundraiser about the teenage daughter of President Clinton, 'Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father,"' Blumenthal writes for Salon.
"As recently as a few months ago, McCain suddenly rushed up to a friend of mine, a prominent Washington attorney, at a social event, and threatened to beat him up because he represented a client McCain happened to dislike, and then, just as suddenly, profusely and tearfully apologized," Blumenthal continues.
Excerpts from column:
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Within the Republican Party nearly everyone who has had serious dealings with McCain distrusts him (including traditional Republican moderates, not just conservatives). While taking right-wing positions on social issues like abortion and gay marriage, his simmering resentment of Bush led him to virtually caucus with the Democrats in early 2001 (before Sept. 11), using the Democratic Leadership Council as his back channel. Then, abruptly, he rushed to embrace Bush.
McCain's political advisors believe that though he would easily be elected president in 2008 if he captured the nomination, he might not get the nomination. In 2000, McCain did not win a primary state where the voting was restricted only to Republicans. So McCain decided to let the general election take care of itself as he won over the party faithful. He campaigned enthusiastically for Bush in 2004. He sought to reconcile with the religious right, whose leaders he had called "agents of intolerance" in 2000, speaking on May 13, 2006, at the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, and hiring its debate coach as a communications aide.
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