By stabbing the President and the Majority Leader in the back in the judges fight, McCain shows that he has no intention of running for President
WASHINGTON—Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced that he has no intention of running for President of the United States this week by his latest egregious blow to Republicans when he joined Democrats in a phony "compromise," that will allow liberal interest groups to continue to block reasonable judges. The extreme leftist group People for the American Way called the McCain sellout, "good news," convinced the measure would help preserve liberal activist judges\’ influence in the courts.
Senate Democrats have spent the last two terms blocking Bush administration nominees through the unprecedented use of the filibuster to create a supermajority requirement for the confirmation of federal judges. Republican lawmakers, led by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn..), were poised to return to the principle that judges with majority support should not be denied an up or down vote, but they were betrayed in the 11th hour by Sen. McCain.
"When McCain brokered the deal to betray his Republican colleagues by negotiating a private surrender to the Democrats, he publicly declared he has no interest in the Presidency. No Republican could expect to win the G.O.P. nod after betraying his party\’s rank and file on one of their most central concerns," said Grover G. Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a leader of the center-right coalition in Washington, D.C..
McCain has no further designs on the Presidency, said Norquist, since his actions have now so alienated the base that the fence could never be mended. Norquist went on to say that since his failure in the primary campaign of 2000, Sen. McCain has "screwed" Christian conservatives, gun owners, free press advocates, taxpayers, and now opponents of the activist judiciary. Experts say such behavior precludes any Presidential aspirations by a Republican.
"John McCain has been transfixed by the lights of the cameras," said Norquist. "In the course of running toward the cameras, McCain has now managed to stomp on the toes of every part of the center-right coalition. He has now made it official: He will not be running for President in \’08."