McCain's temper

Scott Johnson at Powerline has the inside story about what happened when Senator McCain blew up at Senator Cornyn and started swearing at him. McCain had been out of the loop on the negotiations on the bill, but he'd flown in for the final touches and so he could appear at the news conference. But Cornyn, who had been in the negotiations all along, still had objections and it was draggin on beyond the time in McCain's schedule allotted for the press conference and he wanted to get out of there and on to a fund raiser. That's when he started swearing at Cornyn and telling him to butt out because he, McCain, knew so much more than anyone else about the immigration issue.

As Johnson notes, this episode says a lot about John McCain's reported temper.

Two weeks ago, Senator McCain defended his reputation as a hothead on Fox News Sunday, saying he loses his temper only when he sees corruption and wasteful spending. This incident involved neither. It was instead a simple policy dispute, where he didn’t want to debate how his legislation would actually work.

But note that he blew up at a fellow Republican who, as Johnson explains, was trying to improve the bill. He's not going to win over conservatives if he reserves his self-proclaimed ability to reach out to other legislators only to those who are Democrats. Blowing off Cornyn to embrace Kennedy might be a sincere expression of what McCain believes in regarding immigration but it's not a move to endear himself to those whose votes he needs to win the nomination. We're less concerned that the man has a bad temper than why and at whom he chooses to exercise that temper.