John McCain

Prior to the election, we spent a lot of time chronicling various right-wing figures who had, at one point, publicly declared their loathing of John McCain only to subsequently turn around as Election Day approached to admit that they would, after all, vote for him. 

High-profile leaders like James Dobson and Paul Weyrich were joined by the likes of Rick Santorum and Richard Viguerie in undergoing this transformation.  But now that the election is over and McCain is back to his job as a Senator, it seems that some of his one-time supporters have decided that it is now safe to revert back to form.

For instance, Viguerie had never been much of a fan of McCain's and even mulled over the possibility to backing Ron Paul ... until McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate, at which point he became an ardent supporter.

But the support was short-lived, because earlier this month McCain rolled out a new PAC and Viguerie wasted no time in calling it a joke:

On Wednesday afternoon, Senator and former presidential hopeful, John McCain, announced the creation of his new grassroots organization named "Country First."

Commenting on the new organization, ConservativeHQ.com Chairman Richard Viguerie stated, "Senator John McCain is a General without an army. He's attempting to lead but he has no followers because his trumpet does not sound certain."

Like Viguerie, Santorum was also a last-minute supporter of McCain's, thanks in large part to Palin.  And now Santorum too has thrown his opportunistic support aside, penning a column predicting that McCain will become Barack Obama's "ace in the hole" in order to rescue his reputation:

In McCain's mind, however, losing the presidency will not be the final chapter of his life story. He knows the path to "Big Media" redemption. Working with the man who vanquished him in November will show them all the real McCain again.

Remember, it was this onetime prisoner of war who led the charge to open diplomatic relations with Vietnam. If that past is prologue, and McCain's legislative record is any guide, he will not just join with Obama but lead the charge in Congress on global warming, immigration "reform," the closing of Guantanamo, federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research, and importation of prescription drugs.

But McCain won't stop there in his effort to rehabilitate himself in the media's - or maybe his own - eyes. He will forge common ground on a long list of initiatives that go far beyond where he has gone before, including the stimulus package.

Alas, the two White House rivals now stand positioned to help secure each other's place in history.

There is a line from a "Simpsons" episode where Mr. Burns joins Homer's bowling team in a spirit of camaraderie and then steals the team's championship trophy for himself, to which Homer laments "I guess some people never change. Or, they quickly change and then quickly change back."

That pretty much sums it up.

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s historic election, the McCain campaign and RNC led a coordinated campaign to cast the integrity of the vote into doubt. They claimed ACORN was engaging in massive voter fraud. They claimed that Obama was receiving illegal foreign contributions. They claimed that the “liberal media” was skewing the polls in favor of Democrats.

In other words, they were writing themselves an insurance policy in the event of a contested election or narrow loss. But it wasn’t even close.

As a result, the anticipated barrage of conspiracy theories and false charges never materialized. Yet not everyone could just let it go.

Here’s the current poll on Hannity.com:

(h/t: Bob Geiger)

I mentioned yesterday that David Barton was out on the campaign trail, speaking at official McCain/Palin campaign events along with Fred Thompson, actor Robert Davi, and Republican National Committee Deputy Chairman Frank Donatelli and so it seemed like a good time to dust off this video we put together to accompany our 2006 report on Barton and his pseudo-history.

The focus of the report was on Barton's "Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black and White" DVD, in which he examines the Democratic Party's historical hostility to African Americans and insinuates that similarly racist views are still held by the party today. Barton runs through a litany of Democratic sins - ranging from slavery to Jim Crow to segregation to the Ku Klux Klan - while praising the Republican Party as the party of abolition and civil rights ... until his history lesson suddenly ends after the Civil Rights Act of 1965, after which Barton makes absolutely no mention of the political transformation that overtook the country in its wake or the rise of the Republican Party’s “Southern Strategy.”

The video concludes with Barton telling his audience that African Americans cannot be bound blindly to one party or the other, but must cast their votes based on the “standard of biblical righteousness … the principles of Christianity … and an awareness that voters will answer to God for their vote."

Apparently, the McCain camp thought it would benefit from potential voters hearing this sort of biased and fraudulent message from Barton himself during the final days of their campaign.

Dan Gilgoff catches the McCain campaign rolling out an “Americans of Faith” section of its website - one week before the election - and he is decidedly unimpressed:

Months after rolling out pages for "American Indians for McCain and "Arab Americans for McCain," the McCain camp has added an "Americans of Faith" page to its web site.

Not much to the page, just short explanations--none more than 105 words--of McCain's stances in four areas: "Judicial Philosophy," "Protecting Marriage," "Human Dignity and Life," "Service, Community and Values."

In fact, the page is so rudimentary that GOM has decided to lower McCain's reading.

It tells you just how amazingly ill-planned and poorly executed McCain’s outreach to the Right has been that he is rolling out a new webpage aimed at them at the last minute – so much so that it led Gilgoff to actually lower McCain’s God-O-Meter rating.