Well, not exactly but a very credible story posted today at Free Market News. It sounds like he was very upset with how the GOP establishment treated him during the 2000 race (sound familiar?) and was looking to become an independent like Lieberman and caucus with the Democrats in the Congress.
He must have rethought that idea and decided to stick in the party, toe the line, and expect to succeed Bush. Probably a lot of insiders convinced him that if he didn't split with the GOP they would make sure he was next in line if he wanted. Pure speculation on my part of course.
McCain is all about power. And in a country whose majority is of a social democratic bent (European sense of the word), he has to pander to their "values" (more correctly, the bundles of mental confusion in the minds of these people.)
It is important to understand, in a totalitarian democracy the unstoppable trend is toward social democracy/socialism. In the absence of strictly heeded principles of liberty, in the absence of any meaningful separation of powers and in the presence of the totalitarian notion that their must be a supreme ruler ("the people" supposedly represented by the party they voted into power) you are bound to end up with pluralistic socialism, a political system with a long-standing history by now both in your and in my country.
Posted by: Georg Thomas | 06/04/2008 at 01:16 PM
Can you say Bob Dole?
Posted by: mark p | 06/04/2008 at 06:20 PM
What's truly ironic about this is that diehards in the GOP insist that Republicans "must support John McCain" without question because he's a real Republican (so what if he thought about caucusing with the Democrats only 5 or 6 years ago), while we shouldn't even listen to Ron Paul because he's "really a Libertarian" because he ran as one 20 years ago (forget that he's always held office as a Republican, and has never tried to strike a deal with the Democrats to caucus with them).
Posted by: Laura Ebke | 06/04/2008 at 11:31 PM