CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
– CONGRESSIONAL AFFAIRS
Aug. 19, 2009 – 2:12 p.m.
McCain: Maverick No More?
By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff
He ran for president last year as a “maverick” Republican and had a high-profile meeting with Barack Obama after the election, but Arizona Sen. John McCain has been a staunch Republican vote since failing to win the White House.
In fact, McCain is siding with his party this year on closely divided votes with greater frequency than at any other period in his 23-year Senate career, according to a CQ analysis of Senate votes.
On votes that pitted most Democrats against most Republicans, McCain has sided with the consensus GOP position 95.4 percent of the time, a CQ-defined “party unity” score that would be the highest of his Senate career if it holds up for the remainder of the year. He had a 95.2 percent party unity score in 1996, when Republicans held the Senate majority at the end of President Bill Clinton’s first term.
McCain’s year-to-date 2009 party unity score is the 14th highest among the 40 Republican senators. It’s even higher than that of the Senate’s top two Republicans, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (94.0 percent) and Minority Whip Jon Kyl , also of Arizona (94.5 percent).
McCain has participated in 196 of 199 Senate party unity votes, siding with the majority Republican position on all but nine of those votes. Like most Republicans, McCain voted “no” on the economic stimulus law and on Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
McCain led the Republican charge against numerous Democratic proposals this Congress, often acting as the lead sponsor of amendments outlining a Republican alternative. That was the case March 2, when the Senate by a vote of 32-63 rejected McCain’s substitute amendment to the fiscal 2009 omnibus appropriations act and again on April 2, when the Senate rejected McCain’s substitute to the fiscal 2010 budget resolution by a 38-60 vote.
Three of the nine votes on which McCain broke party ranks came from Obama nominations for top Justice Department posts. Unlike most Republicans, McCain voted to confirm Eric H. Holder Jr. as attorney general, David W. Ogden as deputy attorney general and Thomas Perrelli as associate attorney general.
McCain in years past was more likely to buck his party and side with Democrats.
In 2001, the year after he lost the Republican presidential nomination to George W. Bush , McCain’s 67 percent party unity score was among the lowest in the Senate GOP Conference.
In May of that year, after Vermont Sen. James M. Jeffords left the Republican Party and became an independent, McConnell said that McCain “has positioned himself increasingly to the left.”
— Kathleen Hunter contributed to this story.
Comments
Could be because the policies of this administration are so radical that even HE can't vote for any of them.
What a shock - McCain plays nice with dems, dems savage McCain, dems go far left, McCain doesn't follow. The one thing that McCain has always been is fiscally conservative. There has been nothing remotely moderate about what has been coming out of Congress. Even Sens. Snowe & Collins can't vote with the Dems. Now the Dems are reduced to forcing legislation through with Parlimentary tricks because no one wants to be associated with the legislation..
McLame was never a maverick, he only played one on TV and convinced dozens of ignorant media types it was fact.
Gee, it's almost like he's preparing to face a wingnut in a Republican primary.
Gee, what a shock! Right-wing conservative John McCain, after a lifetime of rightwing conservatism plays "maverick" for about 3 years (after getting beat up by the Bush/Rove Machine), and now is back as the reliable Party Of No conservative. And only the press is shocked !
I agree, those lousy Dems are just playing politics (again). I know this is true because it's simply unpossible for a mavericky maverick manly Republican to ever have partisan motivations. Priests take a vow of celibacy, Republicans take a vow of nonpartisancy. Rush told me.
@ FieldMarshall and joeB, You two are hilarious. "so radical" "far left" hahaha...yep.. McCain is awesome and those wacky dems are just so crazy and radically leftist! oh noes!!!!!!
Or maybe he decided that, since he didn't have to pretend to make nice to be perceived as moderate, he's finally showing his true colors. Elections have consequences, including giving the LOSER a chance to lash back.
It's so fascinating watching the hypocritical conservatives spin like tops over this kind of nonsense. I treasure the day when they finally realize they really are just a small, regional minority party made up of grumpy rich white men and crazed militia members with bizarre religious beliefs. The overwhelming majority of Americans elected Obama president and gave the Democratic party majorities in both houses didn't agree with much of anything Old Maverick McCain stood for, opportunist that he is/was and the plummeting popularity of the Republican brand is sad, in some respects. The GOP has become the radical rightist party of the Bush years and, thank God those years are gone, gone, gone. McCain, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Delay, Cheney, are anachronisms outside of the rightwing echo chamber and a large majority of Americans find them frighteningly obtuse. Conservative heads explode en masse, n'ect pas?
Gee I wonder why. Could it be because this president fiscally stands for everything John McCain is against? I'll let you be the guesser on this one.
ha. mccain fiscally conservative. ha, mccain played nice with teh dems. to most republicans the last 8+ years never happened and the great gazoogle doesnt exist.
Why all wingers in the comments here so far? Did this get a Drudge link?
It's because McCain's entire maverick image was a farce. He's always been a toe-the-line type of Republican when it mattered.
So McCain keeps shifting to the money? Nothing new. Last year he was for & against immigration reform, cap & trade, McCain-Kennedy, & McCain- Feingold. Running back to the wingnuts is not a surprise.
The two wing nut here are pretty funny. The point of the article is that after cultivating a persona as a maverick Republican McCain is voting nearly 100% of the time with them. Using that to bash Obama is a pretty good trick fellas but no bodies buying what your selling anymore. Maybe no Republican wants to be associated with the legislation but the majority of Americans do.Remember there was an election and you all lost get used to it.
FieldMarshall, Yes, could be, but who cares what you say? Gun toting at Presidental appearances is pretty radical, not to mention 101 other things dear to the Right. Finally, liberal people are people too! Democracy is (finally) coming to America(?) But if all have your way, it will continue to come at the end of a gun barrel.
One other possible reason is that McCain is such a sore loser he can't bring himself to vote for anything the man who vanquished him last November wants. As for the idea that Obama's policies are so radical that no one wants to be associated with the legislation, they are pretty much just what he campaigned on when he won by nearly ten million votes and took increasing margins in the House and a 60 seat majority in the Senate. The only exceptions might be the stimulus package and some other financial crisis related legislation necessitated by the complete meltdown years of conservative, "fiscally responsible" policy caused. Good luck, Republicans, with your obstructionism.
No need to be all "mavericky" when there's no electoral gain in it. McCain learned that being the iconoclast won't get him the support of the base of his party. He's not going to get many Democratic votes because, despite McCain/Feingold, he really is an AZ conservative. If he wants to have any future he needs to keep the base satisfied. JoeB & FieldMarshall: "Radical"? "Far left"? In the rest of the world the lame moves that this Congress and Administration have pushed through would be soundly center-right. When Obama gets a single-payer health care bill passed, imposes a carbon tax or normalizes relations with Cuba I'll think things have shifted leftward. Give me a break!
One trait that has marked McCain throughout his life and career is anger. He'll never forgive Obama for beating him and certainly won't try to work with him in any way.
McCain continues his lifelong tradition of being a whiny, spoiled, sole loser. Why change as a bitter old man?
Shocker? Not really, McCain probably despises 'That One' so much that he lost his desire to play nice. That, and the time for his presidential ambitions has passed, and thus, no reason to pander to the northeastern moderates that carried him to the nomination in the first place. On top of that, McCain wants to stay on as senator, and he knows full well that he must protect his right flank to get through the 2010 primary. AZ Republicans are quite conservative, and he didn't won the '08 presidential primary there as convincingly as he should have...
"Far left"? Bwahahahahahaha!!!! McCain is far less Mavericky(tm) because his Maverick persona was a construct from the get-go. Since 2001, he's been as mainstream a conservative as they come, and that includes waving a bloody shirt in front of the crowd.
McCain was always a Goldwater/Reagan ant-abortion, pro-military, pro-big business, anti-labor Republican. Now that he's not trying to fool a national audience anymore, he can vote his true beliefs.
Is he not facing "Minuteman" poobah Simcox, and perhaps others, for the nomination - and maybe even some additional challenge for the general election from the ultraright (fringe) spectrum of his adopted state? Moreover, his "maverick" persona always has been exaggerated, for he has stood with the dominant wing of his (Grand OLD) Party on the really big questions of labour-management disputes, environment-industry conflicts, church-state separations, among others.
Nonsense. McCain is up for reelection next year, and is very worried about his wingnut support and talk of a primary challenge.
I read this as McCain votes against whoever beats him in a contentious election. Way to make decisions for the country, Mac.
JoeB --far left? The Dems are doing nothing that they didn't campaign (and win) on. If what the Dems are doing is far left, then so is the country that voted them in while they were proposing these "far left" policies.
McCain has a 82% conservative rating from the American Conservative Union. I mean is it really that surprising? The last time you could have come close to calling McCain a liberal, was in late 90's to 2000 period. McCain is a conservative in some ways even more so then Bush was, but yes he is a conservative. But really how is this news?
I agree with the others that have pointed out that McCain is facing a primary challenge this year. As evidenced by the general election in 2008, he will say anything necessary to shore up his Republican bonafides... as the GOP gets more and more out of touch with mainstream America, so their elected representatives will sound more and more out of touch to avoid primary challengers. Well that and I think the whole maverick schtick was a put-on. If you look at his voting record historically, he was a pretty solid conservative prior to 2000... then he changed to get back at his party for "W".
If a Republican was a maverick under Obama, he wouldn't be a Republican. He would be a twin of Arlen Specter!
Well, it seems McCain still is a maverick. When he opposed a sitting POTUS during 2000 - 2008, he was a maverick. He continues to oppose a sitting POTUS, So why isn't he still a maverick?
Obama has found governing much different from campaigning - no lobbyists, shut down Gitmo, out of Iraq, tax- cheats,non-partisan politics - all of these things went out the door. Of course many will say much of this was out of his hands but still he's the prez. No question the dems won fair and square. And trust me I have no love affair with most Republicans. really enjoy being called names after I post a simple explanation about why McCain is doing what he's doing - it's a shame most of the posters here are so full of anger and rage they can't respond rationally. My daughter asked me last night why one of her friends mom was always so negative about things. I told her "It's simple, she's a democrat." You folks have just reinforced that view. It's nice to always be right!!
This is a very short, I will stick with the , Demos. will get back everything that we have or need. After Bush, it could not be any worse, and I do not think. All we need to do, stick to the Demos.
Joe/FieldMarshall - I couldn't agree more. These policies are off the chart left and you know it when Chavez says, "Obama makes us look conservative". And let's face it at least McCain voted...Obama was 'present' when it came to most decisions. Lastly, a difference of opinion can simply not be discussed w/ Dems w/out them namecalling and getting nasty. After 8yrs of listening to GWB bashing you think they'd allow and entertain a differing opinion about BO...oh nay, nay.
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