McCain didn't even vote for Bush - but we're supposed to vote for him?

On Monday Arianna Huffington (or Zsa Zsa Algore, as she is sometimes known) wrote in a blog entry on The Huffington Post that John McCain had told her and the other guests at a dinner party that he did not vote for George W Bush in the 2000 presidential election.

At a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election, I was talking to a man and his wife, both prominent Republicans. The conversation soon turned to the new president. "I didn't vote for George Bush" the man confessed. "I didn't either," his wife added. Their names: John and Cindy McCain (Cindy told me she had cast a write-in vote for her husband).

Zsa Zsa goes on to write about how much she loved and respected McCain back when he was publicly trashing the Republican party at every opportunity and seeking to undermine the conservative agenda in favor of left-liberalism at every turn.

Then she sadly relates how disappointed in him she is now that he is pretending to be a conservative Republican.

McCain has, of course, issued denials that he ever said such a thing:

Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for McCain, said "It's not true, and I ask you to please consider the source."

McCain aid Mark Salter added this:

"Why would she make something up? Because she's a flake and a poser and an attention-seeking diva. And that's on the record."

Now Zsa Zsa is a flake and a poser and that is on the record BUT she has witnesses who back up her account of events:

From The New York Times

Did Senator John McCain not vote for George W. Bush in 2000? That question has kicked up a minor ruckus in political circles this week as Arianna Huffington and the McCain campaign have traded he-said, she-said barbs...

Now two other guests at the same dinner, given by the actress Candice Bergen, at her home in Beverly Hills, say they heard much the same thing as Ms. Huffington. Both of them, the former "West Wing" actors Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff, were asked by Ms. Huffington to speak to The New York Times. Mr. Whitford said he would be supporting the Democratic nominee and had donated to Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama; Mr. Schiff is supporting Mr. Obama.

From The Washington Post

In separate phone interviews, Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff -- both of whom starred in the television political drama "The West Wing" -- said the senator made the remarks after he spoke at length about his reservations about Bush becoming president. Liberal blogger Arianna Huffington first wrote about the incident Monday, asserting neither McCain nor his wife Cindy backed Bush in his first presidential bid, and the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that a woman who was also at the dinner confirmed Huffington's account, though she declined to give her name. ...

"He was going on and on about how horribly unqualified and untested Bush was, how the campaign had attacked his family," said Whitford, a registered Democrat. "Someone said, 'If he's so terrible, why did you support him?'"

McCain replied that as a member of the GOP, Whitford added, he always intended to back the party's nominee. Then, the actor said, someone asked McCain whether he had cast a vote in favor of Bush.

"He put his finger up to his lips, shook his head and mouthed, 'No way,'" Whitford said.

And from The Los Angeles Times

Another woman who attended the 2001 dinner said Tuesday that Cindy McCain had told her she could not bring herself to vote for Bush. The source said she did not want to be identified, so as not to alienate the McCains.

Zsa Zsa's response to McCain's "consider the source" remark is worth looking at:

My sentiments exactly -- because John McCain has a long history of issuing heartfelt denials of things that were actually true.

He denied ever talking with John Kerry about his leaving the GOP to be Kerry's '04 running mate -- then later admitted he had, insisting: "Everybody knows that I had a conversation."

He denied admitting that he didn't know much about economics, even though he'd said exactly that to the Wall Street Journal. And the Boston Globe. And the Baltimore Sun.

He denied ever having asked for a budget earmark for Arizona, even though he had. On the record.

He denied that he'd ever had a meeting with comely lobbyist Vicki Iseman and her client Lowell Paxon, even though he had. And had admitted it in a legal deposition.

Now Zsa Zsa is a flake - so much so that she sleeps in a cardboard box and bathes in milk - but no where is it written that a flake can't get it right once in a while.

Of course the guests at the dinner party who back up Huffington's story are all liberal. Who but left-liberals would you expect to be invited to a party thrown by Candice Bergen (Remember that it was to the apartment that Bergen shared with her boyfriend that Black Panther leader Huey Newton fled for sanctuary after committing a murder)?

I will leave it to the reader to ponder why the McCains were on Bergen's guest list.

However liberal the witnesses against McCain may be there are a lot of them and they are all telling the same story - separately and from different locations.

I have a question for my fellow Republicans who were planning to hold their nose and vote for McCain. Are you going to show party loyalty to someone who does not reciprocate that loyalty?

Of course there is a chance that McCain was lying to Bergen and Huffington and the others. After all he does have a record of telling whatever audience he is addressing pretty much what they want to hear. To the voters back in Arizona he talked like Ronald Reagan and to the Washington press corps he talked like John Kerry.

It could just be that he craved the approval of the Hollywood Marxists he was dining with and so joined them in their Bush bashing. But what does that say about the man's character and integrity?

John McCain should not be allowed any closer to the White House than the guided tour.