RUSH: You have to feel for Senator McCain a little bit. He goes on the Today Show yesterday, and Matt Lauer asks him when the troops are going to come outta there in Iraq, and McCain says, ‘When they come out is not important,’ blah, blah, blah, blah. He said we still have troops in Germany, still have troops in Japan. We got troops in places. Getting them outta there is not the important thing. Winning the war is important. He’s exactly right, folks. I must say, he’s exactly right. But he’s finding out today (he started finding out yesterday) just how his buddies in the Drive-Bys — and they’re just getting warmed up — are going to carry the water for the extreme leftists in the Democrat Party. You had John Kerry (who served in Vietnam), the haughty one, out there saying McCain’s old. He’s confused.
This is crazy. McCain can’t believe it. He thought he was best buds with Kerry. He’s got Dingy Harry out there saying, ‘Yeah, we can’t trust McCain. He’s got a bad temper. He can fly off the handle at any time.’ McCain was doing a little press conference somewhere this morning and he had the usual coterie of supporters standing behind him, and a reporter gets up and asks again about this comment. ‘Well, Senator McCain, why is it unimportant when the troops come back?’ And you could just see, you could just see. He took a couple pauses. He was ready to dive into that crowd and strangle that stupid reporter, something I would have applauded. But he stood there calmly and said, ‘This is why we need town debates. This is a sound bite problem. This is why we need town hall meetings; the American people asking the questions, so they can hear the whole answer in context,’ and so forth — and he repeated his Iraq position. I support this; I support that.
He didn’t directly answer the guy’s question. LA Times today: ‘McCain’s Remark Sparks an Uproar.’ They’re trying to say that McCain doesn’t care about the troops, by clipping his quote where he says getting them outta there, when they come outta there is not important. Lieberman is now mad. He’s responding. He says, ‘I’m disappointed by these reflexive attacks. The part that I find really most outrageous is the suggestion that Senator McCain is out of touch with the needs of our troops and insensitive to their families,’ which is what the Drive-Bys are saying. These were his base. The Drive-Bys were his base! He’s gotta be sitting there wondering, ‘What the hell happened? These people used to love me!’ Well, they never did love you, Senator McCain. They used you! You were willing to go on their stupid little shows and rip your own party and rip your own president. Of course they’re going to do that.
Now, McCain has changed his mind on a couple things. This would be a goody. This would be a huge one. Somebody could get to Senator McCain and say, Senator, you want to win this election? You want to contrast who you are with Senator Obama and the leftists in the Democrat Party? Here’s your issue. ‘Drill here. Drill now. Energy independence.’ Start now and get on this, and I’m telling you, he would see a miraculous thing happen in his campaign. But I don’t know who can tell him these things. It’s just a sitting duck. It’s a sitting duck. Victor Davis Hanson today has a piece. I think I read it in the New York Post. Victor Davis Hanson, as you know, is a classicist, a historian, he’s a brilliant writer. He’s occasionally been upset with me over my positions on Senator McCain, but nevertheless we’re still on the same team out there. Now, the Hoover Institution where he works is at Palo Alto at Stanford, and that’s the San Francisco peninsula. He lives there.
And he said, ‘What’s fascinating about this to me is that liberals who have all this care and concern for the little guy, all this care and concern for the nation’s downtrodden, are oblivious to the impact on the lives of most Americans of the rising gasoline price.’ Well, good! If liberals are unaware and cavalier and don’t care about the impact of rising gasoline prices on the people who make this country work, then it is even more of a great issue for McCain and the Republican Party to latch onto and claim as their own. Now, I know he probably thinks he’d take a hit if he did a flip-flop on this, and he’s gone pretty much over the cliff here on carbon emissions and all this global warming stuff. But it’s not too late, here. He’ll needs his party on his side. Obama is already in trouble. This is a golden opportunity.