Apparently the senator has finally conceded he didn't know what he was talking about and has ended his peculiar vendetta against UN Ambassador Susan Rice. The whole thing may well have had racial motivation -- though I think McCain's history shows a greater dislike for and uneasiness with women than with people of color. Mostly, though, it was about his general peevishness and the feeling that he's behind the curve. Age -- and weak character -- can do that to a guy. And a political party.
"...Now that every angle of McCain’s attacks have been completely debunked, all he has left is to complain about not being told that intelligence officials didn’t give him this information sooner," says Hamed Aleaziz, writing at Think Progress.
An opinion piece in the Salem (OR) Statesman-Journal, USAToday, and other papers points out that this issue of distorting intelligence has come up before -- and at a time when McCain defended the perp.
McCain was not always so emphatic about what should disqualify a presidential nominee from gaining Senate confirmation. In 2005, when President Bush nominated John Bolton to be his ambassador to the United Nations, McCain was a high profile defenderof the then senior State Department official. Bolton’s opponents said he was unfit for the job because, among other things, he allegedly tried to get a State Department analyst to change an intelligence finding to support his own world view.
Etc., etc. Bottom line? Republican party loses even more points with women voters. That doesn't repair the damage done to a competent Susan Rice, but it's a nice boost for Democrats in 2014.
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