Roost, Chickens Coming Home To
Kim du Toit
May 12, 2008
10:17 AM CDT
The only thing with being a “maverick”, as Republican wannabe-President McCain is finding out, is that when you piss all over people during the course of being a “maverick”, you alienate yourself from people whom you may need as allies later on.
Cases in point:
- Gun owners don’t trust McCain because he allied himself with Andrew McElvey’s so-called “Americans for Gun Safety” (AGS), a gun-restriction organization which sought to encumber gun owners with all sorts of burdensome regulations—all in the name of “gun safety”.
- Conservatives don’t trust McCain because of his several alliances with liberal asswipe Ted Kennedy, not to mention his signature piece of (un-Constitutional) legislation, the McCain-Feingold Act, which limits political speech in the weeks before an election.
- And now, business executives are loath to put money into McCain’s presidential campaign, because Johnny-boy has frequently shown himself to be no friend of Corporate America.
Here’s one example where McCain is not only not getting money, but the same companies who supported George Bush are actually now giving more money to McCain’s
opponents:
Pharmaceutical industry employees and PACs contributed $516,839 to Bush in 2004, compared with $280,688 for Kerry, according to the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics. This time around, they gave $339,729 to Obama, $262,870 to Clinton and only $74,850 to McCain through March.
No ‘Friend’
“McCain has not characterized himself as a friend of the industry,” said Dan Mendelson, president of Avalere Health LLC, a Washington research company.
During a Jan. 5 debate in New Hampshire, McCain criticized the drug companies for high prices charged to the government’s Medicare and Medicaid programs and said he backed importing cheaper drugs from Canada, a position also held by his Democratic opponents.
“How could pharmaceutical companies be able to cover up the cost to the point where nobody knows? Why shouldn’t we be able to re-import drugs from Canada?” McCain asked.
One of his opponents, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, interjected, telling McCain not to paint drug companies as “big bad guys.”
“Well, they are,” McCain responded.
Here’s a tip for McCain, and a warning for others of his ilk.
No Republican ever did well by becoming a populist. Calling drug companies “bad guys” might play well to Democrat and socialist voters [some redundancy], but it’s bad strategy if you’re a Republican.
Let me add something else.
Were it not for the fact that his likely opponent, Obama Rama Ding Dong is a first-class socialist, and had McCain’s primary opponents not been so woefully weak, nobody would piss on McCain if he were on fire. As it is, McCain may end up going to the White House with the weakest mandate and most lukewarm support of any Republican candidate in history.
There’s an old saying which warns: ‘Be careful who you step on when you’re on your way up, because you’re going to meet them on your way down.”
McCain is finding out that stepping on people will-nilly, as he has done, may still turn round to bite him. It already is, when it comes to funding.