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Originally Posted by filtherton
Irrelevant, annoyed remark pointing out flawed logic in above bitter remark.
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Do me a favor, when you quote me directly, make it a real quote ok?
Quote:
Why the Press Loves John McCain
Jacob Weisberg
Posted Monday, Oct. 4, 1999, at 4:15 PM PT
...Why do the hacks love McCain? You could start with our admiration for a quality not many of us possess: physical courage. But I think the deeper admiration is for the guts McCain showed in his Vietnamese captivity and which he's shown consistently ever since. Everyone knows by now the story told in McCain's book, how he voluntarily suffered five and a half years as a P.O.W. in Vietnam after refusing an early release. McCain wasn't just a war hero. He was a kind of spirit of resistance personified, a man who writes in his book (click here for a Ballot Box review) that he found freedom in captivity by tormenting his torturers, even at the cost of additional abuse. McCain is a Faulknerian character, in a very different sense than Bill Clinton is. And I think that at this point, even those of us who think Clinton has been a good president hunger for a successor more deserving of our respect.
Reporters who have covered McCain in the Senate have seen Republican politics considerably enlivened by this defiant character. McCain is barely tolerated by his party's leadership, and he hardly conceals his contempt for Trent Lott and Mitch McConnell. He has broken with his colleagues over campaign-finance reform, over legislation to punish cigarette makers, and over corporate welfare. There's a bit of the "strange new respect" phenomenon in the way journalists respond to these positions. When a conservative politician takes liberal stands, he is often described as having "grown." Yet McCain remains a genuine conservative, the farthest to the right of any of the other plausible candidates in the race (a category that excludes the born-again Bible slinger Steve Forbes). Reporters respect McCain less because he takes liberal positions than because of the way he puts his beliefs ahead of his career as a matter of course.
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http://slate.msn.com/id/1003748/
While the reporter obviously is a lefty if he thinks McCain is far right (note this was in the 2000 primary and the reporter doesn't even mention Bush hehe) but the obvious is there. McCain takes 'liberal' stances despite being 'farthest to the right'. Hense the press loved him, and he loved talking to the press.
So please Filthy do me the favor of just distoring what I say, not changing it.