Sometimes, a single gaffe - real or imagined - comes to symbolize an entire presidential campaign. With Americans struggling as unemployment topped 7% in 1992, President George H.W. Bush saw his reelection prospects dimmed by his reported amazement at a simple grocery store checkout scanner. But while Bush 41's defining out-of-touch moment may be the […]

Senator John McCain may have helped investigate the Jack Abramoff affair, but the stench of the scandal continues to engulf McCain's campaign and his Republican Party. On Friday, convicted friend-of-Jack and former Ohio congressman Bob Ney was released from a Cincinnati halfway house. And on Monday, McCain will attend an Atlanta fundraiser hosted by former […]

Yesterday, John McCain unveiled a disingenuous new ad touting himself as the "Original Maverick." Designed to distance himself from President Bush, the spot portrays McCain as a rebel battling the special interests in his own party. Of course, during the Republican primaries McCain was telling a much different story. Then, the original Maverick was a […]

The leading lights of the Republican Party like to endlessly badmouth trial lawyers. Endlessly, that is, until they need one. Former Mississippi Senator Trent Lott is no exception. Back in 2004, Lott ridiculed John Edwards, saying of John Kerry's running mate, "He's a charming guy who was a suing lawyer -- that's S-U-I-N-G lawyer." But […]

Republican presidential nominee John McCain is fond of claiming, "I know how to win wars." Apparently, he also has ideas about how to start them. In the fall of 2001, McCain suggested the recent anthrax attacks that so terrified Americans might be a perfect pretext for war with Iraq. That revelation comes via ThinkProgress in […]

As the events of the past few days demonstrate, George W. Bush was right all along about John McCain. McCain, the so-called maverick who promised to run a "respectful" campaign, has turned to the gutter politics of sleazy ads, baseless attacks and outright lies in his desperate effort to beat Barack Obama. And as Bush […]

In the wake of Phil Gramm's disastrous "whiners" remarks three weeks ago, John McCain claimed his close friend and key economic adviser "does not speak for me - I speak for me." Sadly for Mr. Straight Talk, Gramm that very day was in New York meeting with the Wall Street Journal editorial board to explain […]

This week, Americans were introduced to Wrong-Way McCain. To be sure, it's the same John McCain ("McSame") who would continue the policies of George W. Bush that 80% of Americans believe have put the country on the wrong track. It's also the same "Jukebox John" who has changed his tune 61 times on issues foreign […]

In San Diego today, John McCain will make a most unusual pitch to Hispanic voters at the annual convention of the National Council of La Raza. Having performed a complete 360 degree turn on the immigration reform package he once championed, McCain now insists that he's "earned" the trust of Latino voters. In his remarks, […]

Just two weeks after John McCain's latest declaration that the American economic slowdown is "psychological," his top adviser Phil Gramm also insisted the recession is all in our heads. The American people are not merely experiencing a "mental recession," Gramm announced, but are "a nation of whiners" for complaining about it. In an interview Wednesday […]