Take this with a grain of salt, because quite frankly it could just be another attempt to further splinter the GOP, especially where Tom Dasschole is concerned....Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) 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.
In interviews with The Hill this month, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and ex-Rep. Tom Downey (D-N.Y.) said there were nearly two months of talks with the maverick lawmaker following an approach by John Weaver, McCain’s chief political strategist.
In the same article, Mr. Weaver says now:
that Downey is grossly mischaracterizing their exchange: “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. Nothing more or less than that.”
McCain is a diva, to be sure. I can believe he would switch parties, but then he probably thought he could do more damage by staying in....and look at what he has wrought:
McCain Feingold, McCain Kennedy, McCain Lieberman, McCain Edwards.....
