McCain is done -- baste him one more time -- in 2001 he was ready to leave the Republican Party
- From: "Joe S." <no_one@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 17:51:10 -0400
QUOTE
2008 White House hopeful Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) almost left the GOP in the
early days of the first Bush administration, The Hill is reporting.
McCain "was close to leaving the Republican Party in 2001, weeks before
then-Sen. Jim Jeffords (Vt.) famously announced his decision to become an
Independent, according to former Democratic lawmakers who say they were
involved in the discussions," writes Bob Cusack for The Hill.
Cusack says interviews with former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) and former Rep.
Tom Downey (D-NY) reveal that "there were nearly two months of talks with
the maverick lawmaker following an approach by John Weaver, McCain's chief
political strategist."
While Democrats attempted to persuade Jeffords and then-Sen. Lincoln Chafee
(R-RI) to move to the Democratic Party, "in McCain's case, they said, it was
McCain's top strategist who came to them," Cusack reports.
Weaver accuses Downey of mischaracterization. "We certainly didn't discuss
in any detail about the senator's political plans and any discussion about
party-switchers, generically, would have been limited to the idle gossip
which was all around the city about the [Democrats'] aggressive approach
about getting any GOP senator to switch in order to gain the majority,"
Cusack quotes Weaver. "Nothing more or less than that."
Downey insists, Cusack says, that Weaver is "well aware that their
discussion was much more than typical Washington chit-chat."
For his part, McCain has repeatedly asserted in recent years that he has a
strong conservative record, despite attacks from some right-wing activists.
He also explicitly denied in a statement that he planned to abandon the GOP.
"As I said in 2001," Cusack quotes McCain, "I never considered leaving the
Republican Party, period."
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/McCain_nearly_abandoned_Republican_Party_in_0330.html
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