How much of an ornery asshole is John McCain?
Woods said "it hurts" McCain to vote against legislation like the Dream Act after years of working on reform but said the senator felt betrayed when Latinos overwhelmingly supported Obama in 2008. "When you carry that fight at great sacrifice year after year and then you are abandoned during the biggest fight of your life, it has to have some sort of effect on you," he said.
I wonder why Latinos would turn against McCain? I mean, shouldn't they have overlooked the GOP's open hostility and reward them with the White House? And shouldn't they have ignored McCain's own betrayal of their own interests? Let's go back to the Republican presidential debate in January 30, 2008:
MS. HOOK: Senator McCain, let me just take the issue to you, because you obviously have been very involved in it. During this campaign, you, like your rivals, have been putting the first priority, heaviest emphasis, on border security. But your original immigration proposal back in 2006 was much broader and included a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are already here.
What I'm wondering is, and you seem to be downplaying that part, at this point, if your original proposal came to a vote in the Senate floor, would you vote for it?
SEN. MCCAIN: It won't. It won't. That's why we went through the debate.
MS. HOOK: I know, but what if it did?
SEN. MCCAIN: No, I would not, because we know what the situation is today. The people want the border secured first. And so to say that that would come to the floor of the Senate, it won't. We went through various amendments which prevented that ever, that proposal.
So how could Latinos have "abandoned" McCain, when it was McCain that abandoned them first -- on January 30, 2008, to be exact?
Perhaps McCain's problem is that he believed the pre-2008 election hype that he was competitive with Latinos, or perhaps he thought Latinos were too stupid to take stock of his betrayal (I mean, why would Latinos be watching a Republican presidential debate?).
Whatever the reason, what we're seeing now isn't just McCain's delusions and fantastical ability to rewrite history in his own mind, but also his grand capacity to vindictively hurt those he thinks wronged him, even if doing so requires him to take a baseball bat to their innocent children.