Maybe McCain can hook up with Reverend Haggard.

McCain is a pathetic man. Other people I know, Republicans and Democrats, have become turned off by him.

I don't think he'll be the next president. He's become disingenuous. Sad.

McCain equals MOTS...More Of The Same.

Are there any decent Republicans left?

McCain seems to be intent on destroying whatever is left of his reputation. What is he going to do next, introduce a law bringing back stoning as a punishment for heresy.

Assimilated Press
Read God Fires Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson And James Dobson

Why are people (particularly Dems) continually surprised at McCain's conservative views?

In politics, the sometimes enemy of your enemy isn't necessarily your friend.

McCain is against same-sex marriage. For a flag-burning amendment. Against including sexual orientation in hate crimes legislation. And so on.

Just because he clashes with Bush sometimes (then bends over in the end) doesn't mean he's a friend of the Democrat.

Wow. What a maverick!

A Republican who opposes gay marriage!

Dissent Protects Democracy.

Off-topic: Is a Green Party candidate actually drawing 14 percent for Illinois Governor? Tell me that there's some mistake here.

That's the way I would probably vote in Illinois if I lived there.

Voting for a crook is just not appealing while the Republican is hopeless.

What party faithful fail to understand is that McCain's conservative - I would rather call them reactionary - views have not gone unnoticed by any liberal.

(Of course, I can only speak for myself but I tend to the conceit that we liberals are an intelligent lot. :-))

Strict party-line voting is anathema to thinking sorts. Even Republicans refused to back David Duke.

McCain has gone way off the charts to the dark side. Terrible what people will sometimes do in the pursuit of power. Whatever small chance McCain ever had to be president, there is no chance at all now. Oddly McCain has not even enhanced his appeal to rightwingers.

The attraction of John McCain was his campaign to break the influence of the corrupt power brokers in the Republican Party. You think that would not have been a good thing?

The Daleys in Chicago have been as malign an influence as the Bushes in Texas. Because they call themselves Democrats does not make them any more appealing. The Daleys harmed the Democratic Party over the years in the same way the Bushes have now wrecked the Republican Party.

Welcome to the wilderness, Republicans. You earned it.

Best, Terry

Maybe Charlie Crist, who's running for governor here in Florida. I'm not voting for him and I don't agree with him on a number of things but he seems to be a rather old-fashioned Eisenhower Republican whom as attorney general, actually went after price-gougers and assorted other corporate sleezebags. He even supports civil unions for gays. The right wing wackos here were horrified when he won their primary.

So, along with AZ, there is a proposed anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment in VA and MA. Are there any other states considering this type of amendment or legislation this election season?

We'll see what happens on the actual election day. Supposedly the Green is doing well b/c the Dem governor, Blagojevich, has some associates (at least one of whom is a former GOP fundraiser) under investigation by Patrick Fitzgerald.

The Daleys can't even begin to compare to the Bushes. There are limits to the power of a mayor. None of them have even been governors. They have some corruption/machine issues, but hardly on the scale of the Bush family, intertwined as it is in world geo-politics.

Whether liberals notice McCain's views doesn't matter. The media will always give him a pass. We'll see what happens to him in the GOP primary, and whether the far right will forgive him for his (rather small and meaningless) past apostasy.

Not in MA this year. It got held up in the constitutional convention somehow.

There are 2006 ballot initiatives that would outlaw same-sex marriage in eight states (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin).

http://www.glaad.org/media/resource_kit_detail.php?id=3911

You would think we'd be out of states by now! Hopefully there won't be any left by 2008.

Prop 107 sounds similar to the ballot initiative in Ohio, which went far beyond gay marriage and for that reason was actually opposed by a lot of Republicans, including Sens. DeWine and Voinovich (not that it mattered, but it does show how extreme McCain is to oppose not just marriage but civil unions and even domestic partnership benefits). If you ask people without marriage being part of the conversation, I think polls are getting close on civil unions and in favor of partnership benefits.

Thank you very much for that reply and link. It's of help to me in a project I'm working on.

RE: The MA constitutional convention, that amendment was defeated on Wednesday, 104 - 94 in the legislature. In the House it was 97 against, 62 for; and in the senate it was 32 for and 7 against.

link

Lincoln Chaffee... but he's about to be out of a job.

I like Orrin Hatch on copyright protection / intellectual property law. And... nothing else.

And Mike Bloomberg... who's really a Democrat.

I can't say I'm disappointed in McCain because I was never particularly fond of him to begin with. I mean, he strikes me as a decent enough person - someone who means well, and someone who, even when I disagree with him, is at least thoughtful about the issues and isn't basing his opinions completely on truthiness. But... I still disagree with him a good 95% of the time. I wouldn't expect him to be FOR gay marriage, and with '08 looming I wouldn't expect him to "stay out of it" either.

Let's be honest, there's only one reason any of us have any fondness for McCain - the 2000 primary. He got screwed by Bush - so we feel symapthetic. But that wasn't gonna make him, like, change parties or anything.

More importantly, he learned his lesson in 2000: fall in line with the fundies if you want to have any chance at winning the primary - we saw Dole melt down and kowtow to the RR back during his presidential run, and we saw Bush Sr. do it before him. And in those days fundies weren't nearly the political force they are today.

And McCain's voting record has always been Evangelist-friendly. He's far, far to the right. The RR's problem with him wasn't that he didn't walk the walk - it was that he didn't talk the talk. He's always been a hardcore Republican, he's just got Democrat style.

Mc Cain will seve as a exceptional commander and chief