The Villagers' favorite politician is making them all go back to their computers and rewrite their own stories that they've run for years, because in a Newsweek article about his recent campaign, he now refutes the idea that he was ever a Maverick at all.

Many of the GOP's most faithful, the kind who vote in primaries despite 115-degree heat, tired long ago of McCain the Maverick, the man who had crossed the aisle to work with Democrats on issues like immigration reform, global warming, and restricting campaign contributions. "Maverick" is a mantle McCain no longer claims; in fact, he now denies he ever was one. "I never considered myself a maverick," he told me. "I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities." Yet here was Palin, urging her fans four times in 15 minutes to send McCain the Maverick back to Washington.

Talk about political hackery. This ranks up there with the best of the best. Will the media start calling him Keating 5 McCain and be done with it?

The S&L scandal (The Keating 5) that he was involved with forced McCain to reinvent himself so he went the Mavericky route.

Steve Benen says it was a rebranding of McCain's image to the public because of how bad conservatives were viewed and I agree, but I believe he did this to survive politically in the eyes of the media after so many people lost their money and the government bailed out Lincoln's Savings to the tune of $2.8 billion.

Jonathan Alter made this point on Countdown during the general election:

ALTER: [Y]ou remember the Keating Five scandal that he was a part of, which, by the way, it's crazy but there's been very little about it in the press in the last few weeks. And McCain thinks he's getting a hard time, he's really getting a free ride on the fact that he was in the middle of the last great financial scandal in our country.

John "Keating 5" McCain is been kicked around by JD Hayworth and it's shown the depths politicians will sink in order to keep their power. But you know the media will keep booking him on their Sunday Talk Shows. They're addicted to the Maverick. They think they are being "balanced." Oy.

politibits: In a whirlwind of position changes and drama queen spotlight chasing, McCain rushed to the rescue and everything went 'kablooey.' All of a sudden, the congressional republicans, whose ideas from 1994 thru 2006 got us here, decided they didn't like the deal. So the Maverick flip flopped and went to Oxford to change minds.

Adult Christianity: In another Christianist email smear, a former employee of CBN and CampusCrusade for Christ, has posted an essay suggesting that God chose Sarah Palin to defeat Barack Obama.

William K. Wolfrum Chronicles: John McCain hires Palin's Kenyan pastor to "remove witchcraft from the economy."

Bread With Circus: Prior to her visit to the UN, the only foreign leader Caribou Barbie had met was former drug dealer, now Premier of the Yukon Territory, Dennis Fentie.

Corrente: The crisis explained

Vagabond Scholar: Right-Wing Cartoon Watch

Jon Stewart traces John McCain's evolution from a straight-talking maverick to a shameless panderer who now embraces all the things he used to condemn.

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"He started out as a maverick reformer. But now this reformed maverick is something even better: a winner. And he's loving it."

Best McCain Analogy Evah...

From the comments on the Just Because McCain Says He’s a “Maverick” Doesn’t Make It So post:

fiver Says :

A high school friend of mine had an old Maverick. It had lots of miles and was pretty run down. It didn't always start in the winter, and it overheated pretty easily if you drove it to far. On the highway it generally pulled to the right, but it could change direction in an instant - almost so fast you couldn't remember the original direction.

Of course it used a ton of gas, burnt oil and created clouds of smoke. But every time my buddy got pulled over, he'd tell the cops the car had been towed and spent a long time in the pound. For some reason, that excuse seemed to work all the time…

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

On Fox News Sunday when asked to "assess the Bush presidency" by Chris Wallace, John McCain asserted that "history will judge the president" and ran through a litany of talking points attempting to differentiate himself from the current administration. One area he was most insistent about was that he is a "maverick" who continues to oppose the Bush administration's use of torture.

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McCain: I obviously don’t want to torture any prisoners. There’s a long list of areas that we were in disagreement on, but I also think ...

Wallace: You’re not suggesting he did want to torture prisoners?

McCain: Well, waterboarding to me is torture, OK? And waterboarding was advocated by the administration and according to published reports was used, but the point is, we’ve had our disagreements, and I've been called a quote "maverick," and I'm not the most popular person in my party.

Though McCain himself was a victim of torture and has been outspoken about his opposition to it, his voting record has not matched his rhetoric.

ThinkProgress:

McCain seems to forget that he voted against a bill that would have banned the CIA from using waterboarding. In fact, when the bill passed, McCain urged Bush to veto it, which he did. Thus, McCain’s claim that he “obviously doesn’t want to torture prisoners” rings hollow. Indeed, because of Bush’s veto, the CIA retains the option of waterboarding prisoners. ..(more)

And it wasn't just torture that John McCain was being disingenuous about. His oft-repeated claim that he is a "maverick" is a myth. His own home state paper, The Arizona Republic, concluded otherwise, finding through an analysis of his Senate votes over the past decade "that McCain almost never thwarted his party's objectives." Just like he did on torture, he oft pretends to be against something but only until his vote is actually needed to count, and whenever that happens he falls reliably in line.

Likewise, his attempts to differentiate himself from Bush would be laughable if so much weren't at stake. John McCain has voted with George W. Bush 95 percent of the time in 2007, and has voted with him 100 percent so far this year.

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Thanks to C&Ler Mugsy for suggesting this clip. It's amazing to me that if this is the best the McCain campaign has to offer in terms of promoting his candidacy, that Barack isn't ahead by double digits. And what does it say about the state of McCain's campaign when FOX News isn't even helping him out, but confronting him with *gasp* logic?

WALLACE: Does Senator McCain really believe that, that this country is worse off than we were four years ago?

DAVIS: Sure, all along the trail, John McCain campaigns around real people. He goes to town halls, he hears what they have to say to him. You don't have to be in very many town halls, Chris, to understand that people are pinched by the increase in gas prices, they're losing jobs because of some downturn in manufacturing, and the economy as a whole has been very hard on the American family. That's what John McCain's referring to. He doesn't have to go very far every day to find those kind of examples.[..]

WALLACE: Given that, if the country's worse off, isn't both the President and John McCain, aren't they both responsible?

Whoops! I don't think Davis wants to be backed into this particular corner. His response? Beyond lame.

DAVIS: Well, look, if you want to talk about history, then you can make all the cases you want to make.

History? His own ad asks if we're better off four years ago and then Davis doesn't want to go into the fact that McCain's voted FOR the policies that have put us in this position. So what's an uber- lobbyist turned campaign manager to do to deflect this cognitive dissonance? Reach into the bag and pull out the tried-and-true, "But he's such a Maverick™!" meme:

DAVIS: Let me remind you too, there's been never a bigger maverick in this town than John McCain. I mean, we talk about how many times you voted for Bush or against Bush. But you've been in this town a long time. Who is the biggest irritant to this administration for the last ten years or last eight years? John McCain. He sided with Democrats when he thought they were doing the right thing for the country, he sided with Republicans when he thought they were doing the right thing for the country. So you can say all you want about the record, but who is the one proven commodity in this town who's willing to put his country first and take strong positions, sometimes against the current administration or his own party in order to do what's right? And that's been McCain.

I don't want to shock those low information voters still supporting McCain at this point, but wouldn't the gist of this defense --considering the stipulation made by McCain's own campaign that we're worse off -- indicate REALLY poor judgment on McSame's part? Even Chris Wallace isn't buying it:

WALLACE: But I got to come back at you. If you say the country is worse off than it was four years ago, clearly, the President has to bear some of the responsibility and by his own record, by his own admission, John McCain voted with the President, last year 95% of the time.

Oops, there's that corner again. And Davis has no ammunition to get out:

DAVIS: Sure, but how many of these things actually had anything to do with the current economic conditions, or where we are in other places?

Crazy ill-prepared campaign hack say what? I'm telling you, if this is the best they have, the polls are pretty pathetic.

Full transcript below the fold

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TPM Election Central: The definitive McMaverick Iraq timeline.

American's Bulletin: Eric Shine is having a bad day

MarketWatch: Eleven reasons America is the top socialist economy

Hullabaloo: Coming soon to an inbox near you!

Jesus' General: BushCo working with the terrorists

Hendrik Hertzberg: Well Regulated

In Columbus today, John McCain made his pitch that he, and not Barack Obama, is the candidate of hope. In a major if theoretical reversal of his commitment to a perpetual 100, a thousand or a million year American presence in Iraq, McCain declared that he "would hope to have achieved" a drawdown of most U.S. forces by the end of his first term in 2013. But given McCain's unbroken record of error of forecasting when it comes to Iraq, Americans should rightly view his new 10 year prediction with suspicion.

And with a total suspension of disbelief. In a speech that was more hypothetical thought exercise than policy address, McCain did his best John Lennon impersonation and asked Americans to "imagine all the people" (or at least most of them) back from Iraq by the end of his first term:

"By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced. Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders. The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role."

While McCain's prognostication of peace, love and harmony in Iraq just 10 years after the U.S. invasion is a happy one, it should be viewed as nothing more as a charade that substitutes wishful thinking for serious policy. After all, as he has proved time and time again, John McCain's Iraq crystal ball is broken.

Here's is just a small sample of McCain's consistently - and devastatingly - wrong predictions about Iraq...

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Gin and Tacos: Conservatives' states benefit the most from the federal tax policies they often oppose.

Shakesville: "Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch Part Forty-Three and Clinton Sexism Watch Part Ninety-One." Now with Bigot Bingo!

Huffington Post: Ali Eteraz debunks Edward Luttwack's claims that the Muslim world might seek to execute Barack Obama as an apostate. (Funny how the New York Times is essentially recycling the same, long-debunked concern trolling of Daniel Pipes and other right-wingers from four months ago.)

Campaign for America's Future: Bill Scher examines McCain's move "from independent maverick to incoherent conservative" on the environment, and Rick Perlstein's Nixonland book tour might be hitting your city this very week.

Media Bloodhound: Not even Tim Russert and his dry erase board can compete with John King's "months-long affair" with his interactive election map. (The map could do sooo much better.)

Guest roundup by Batocchio. Please e-mail submissions and tips to Batocchio9 at yahoo dot com. Thanks!

Stephen Colbert looks at the messy business of tricky associations when running for president.

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Nation, the more I learn about John McCain, the more I love his maverick spirit. For example, his critics say he’s too old. So what does McCain do? He keeps aging. The politically expedient thing would be to grow younger. Uh uh. McCain clearly doesn’t care what the polls say. But there was one recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that he should pay attention to. If found that 32% of Americans consider Barack Obama’s connection to Rev. Wright a major concern. But 43% are concerned about John McCain’s connection to George Bush. In other words, the biggest political albatross heading into November is George Bush. That…that is a shame. Especially considering everything President Bush has done to ensure the extinction of albatrosses.