If someone busted into your house and robbed you, would you then forgive them if you found out they were a veteran? Of course not. So why are we forgiving McCain for selling out his country by supporting the Bush agenda?
Adam McKay
McCain is the kid who was really cool in middle school but never got high school game and people are sick of him acting like he's still popular.
McCain likes strong defense, and he's viscerally suspicious of big companies. So he's more a Square Deal guy than a New Deal guy.
Amity Shlaes
I am uncomfortable with Sarah Palin. I have nothing against her. I'll say she's a very talented woman. Yet I think she owes John McCain her gratitude and loyalty.
Ana Navarro
From its skillful editing to its out-of-control budget and its relentless marketing, Mr. Obama's team played a different game at a different level than Sen. John McCain and his traditionalist staff.
Andrew Breitbart
In September 2008 - as Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and AIG, the world's biggest insurance company, accepted a federal bailout - Senator John McCain of Arizona, in what was widely viewed as a political move, suspended his presidential campaign and called on Obama to rush back to Washington for a bipartisan meeting at the White House.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I read 'Game Change.' If you want to relive the campaign, that book is unbelievable. It's great. It's the book of that campaign. It brought all the memories back of everything with Clinton and Obama, and Sarah Palin and McCain, and choosing her, and John Edwards. It was an interesting book.
Annette Bening
McCain courted in 2008 what I would call 'fringe' evangelicals, in part because evangelicals were skeptical of his commitment to values voters. McCain's embrace of Palin came after having to scuttle endorsements from John Hagee and Rod Parsley, charismatics who believed in Armageddon and fiercely supported Israel.
Anthea Butler
Of course, no one doubts McCain's personal tenacity, from braving torture to overcoming cancer. Yet plenty of nonpartisan observers doubt his credibility.
Ari Melber
Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel's. It will be a strong friend of Israel's under a McCain administration. It will be a strong friend of Israel's under an Obama administration. So that policy is not going to change.
Barack Obama
If there was one senator who could truly empathize with being tortured in prison, it was John McCain.
Bill Browder
In 2008 all the stars aligned perfectly for Obama's 6-point victory over John McCain. He was an inexperienced, untested neophyte, and successfully convinced enough voters to paint their own version of what hope-and-change was all about on the blank canvas he provided.
Bob Beauprez
In some ways, it's better that Obama got elected than McCain. I'd rather be stabbed in the chest with an Obama steak knife than to have been slowly bled to death with McCain paper cuts. Say what you will, but Obama has brought about a patriotic and civic renaissance, the likes of which I have never seen.
Brad Thor
Among the events of John McCain's five-and-a-half years of imprisonment and torture in North Vietnam, probably the most heroic, and surely the most celebrated, was his refusal to accept an early release from his captors.
Bret Stephens
I don't know a single Republican in Montana who would get in a fight in a bowling alley for John McCain.
Brian Schweitzer
You're never going to hear me say, 'Well, I've been critical of Obama five times, so now I need to be critical of McCain five times.' That is a false equivalence, and that's what I think is wrong with journalism.
Campbell Brown
Experience is a legitimate issue when John McCain raises it about Obama, and it's also legitimate for us to raise it about Palin.
I myself have raised plenty of questions about Sarah Palin, much to the annoyance of the McCain campaign. But those questions have been about her qualifications and experience, never her appearance.
I have had enough of the sexist treatment of Sarah Palin... I call upon the McCain campaign to stop treating Sarah Palin like she is a delicate flower who will wilt at any moment.
I think of John McCain as a conservative, but he is clearly not the same kind of 'conservative' as, say, Rand Paul. The word is close to losing almost all meaning.
Charlie Sykes
The GOP was once the party of William F. Buckley Jr., Ronald Reagan, and John McCain.
In 2013 and 2014, I traveled to Ukraine three times with Senator John McCain.
I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him.
Cindy McCain has emerged as a definite hottie. I think that sometimes happens to women in their early fifties.
Really, what's not to love in John McCain, satire-wise? As if he had not already been good enough to us, then came his nomination of Sarah Palin. Here, truly, was a gift from the gods of satire.
Economic conservatives like immigration reform, and in fact, many of them supported the bill that John McCain and I put together in the Senate.
McCain needs Hillary to run because that's what keeps the Republican coalition together. She helps unite the Republican base.
Presidents seem to fall into two positive categories: they're one of us, or they're heroes. Both McCain and Obama probably see themselves as potential heroes - presidents who will be looked up to, not presidents everyday people will remark are 'just like me.'
With the likely nominations of Barack Obama by the Democrats and John McCain by the Republicans, one of these two parties is headed for a 2009 crack-up that could prove as messy as any party civil war in recent history.
I'm an emotional woman when it comes to service to our country. I watched many people's children leave and go serve. This is something that is the fiber of the McCain family. It was nothing more than me just saying I believe in this country so strongly.
My wife used to be an anchorwoman in Arizona, so she knew John McCain, and she liked him, and I kinda liked him.
I thought that Donald Trump's ascendancy would end when he attacked John McCain, saying he's not a war hero. I found that shocking, for him to say that.
Just hear Senator McCain speak. He may not give you the answer you are looking for, he may not be in agreement with you on a stance or an issue, but the man is honest to a fault.
When I was first assigned to cover the Republican presidential race in 2007, that meant covering John McCain. He was the next in line, and at that point that mattered in the GOP.
McCain was so passionate and determined, but he was also practical. He understood what a heavy lift it was to get a 60-vote, filibuster-proof margin on something that lawmakers feared would hurt their ability to campaign to keep their jobs.
John Sidney McCain III was as complex as they come.
The John McCain I first started to get to know in earnest was the one who had just returned to the U.S. Senate after losing the 2000 Republican presidential primary.
Far be it from me to denigrate Senator McCain's advice on vice presidential nominees.
Some of the reasons John McCain lost in 2008 were his lackluster campaign, his refusal to showcase Obama's extreme liberalism and, thus, his failure to demonstrate why he would make a better president than Obama.
Any concerns that Romney will adopt McCain's milquetoast campaign model are quickly diminishing.
Palin was a political Hail Mary, a long bomb in the closing minutes of a game that John McCain and Co. were certain to lose. They didn't care if she had the policy or political or emotional capacity to serve as vice president, let alone president. They were willing to drive the country off a cliff, if that's what it took to win.
'Not again!' I thought to myself this morning, as news trickled out that John McCain was set to pick Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Not again, because too often women are promoted for the wrong reasons, and then blamed when things don't go right.
Every time I nostalgically try to regain my liking of John McCain, he reaches into his sleaze bag and pulls out something malodorous.
I don't disagree with Senator McCain when he talks about the earmark process.
When Senator McCain reaches across the aisle to find Democrats to support efforts to make America stronger, he finds plenty of us standing, willing to help him and many other Republican leaders.
I have respect for Senator McCain. I used to like him a lot. I supported him. I raised a lot of money for his campaign against President Obama.
If both John McCain and Obama were given a sip of truth serum, both would admit they made serious mistakes in choosing running mates in 2008.
The Republican Party, which John McCain led as our nominee in 2008, is going to become irrelevant if we become the party of intolerance and hate. The party founded by Abraham Lincoln was a party that fought slavery and intolerance at every level.
John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as running mate is the towering example of his poor judgment. Palin's ignorance of public affairs is monumental.
I'd vote for Mickey Mouse before I voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin.
