With much fanfare, Meghan McCain returned to her spot as the “conservative” commentator on ABC’s “The View”. McCain was on maternity leave after giving birth to her daughter Liberty Sage, The response to this occurrence has been interesting.
Happy New Year ladies and welcome home Megan ❤
— nancy humbach (@NHumbach) January 4, 2021
Let the whining, self centering and irrelevant takes begin.
— Donna Lee Saunders W (@DonnaLeeSaunde2) January 4, 2021
Give us Ana please. Meghan gives the View nothing but head and ear aches.
— Make it make sense😒 (@DonDyva) January 4, 2021
Me Again is back. Not at all "deeply humbled".
— Joanne Pfetsch (@Duchessjo44) January 4, 2021
I call “The View,” “The Harpies,” because all they do is screech over each other and guests they don’t like, and like the Harpies of Greek mythology, generally make your ears bleed. It’s about the mud puddle level of discourse that matches Meghan McCain’s skill sets.
Since McCain bounded onto the political scene after college, she has been lauded as a fresh-faced, conservative voice. McCain joined her father (John McCain… duh)’s 2008 presidential campaign, and launched the McCain Blogette (no longer active), which she claimed captured the lighter side of the campaign. According to Nicky Swift,
“McCain told the Los Angeles Times that she started the blog to help younger voters understand what goes on during a campaign and to ‘strip away the mystery with a behind-the-scenes look at her family and closed-press events.’
“ ‘It’s not a medium to get policy or to sell my candidate’s issue,’ she said. ‘I just kind of wanted to show people that the campaign trail is messy; candidates’ children aren’t perfect.’ The Los Angeles Times reported that McCain’s blog became a lightning rod for criticism, with political detractors skewering everything from its light tone to how she did, indeed, sometimes use the platform to weigh in on political controversies. For better or worse, the blog catapulted Meghan onto the world stage.”
True that, and she has used that name recognition to the hilt. With the accomplishment of a liberal arts degree in art history (art history?) and a mostly marginal blog, she became a “best-selling author”, political writer for the Daily Beast, political commentator on MSNBC and Fox (from one extreme to the other), and now in her current stint on ABC’s “The View” as the “conservative” commentator.
My colleague Becca J. Lower, who knows politics in general, and Arizona politics in particular, had this say:
“My opinion is the same as most conservatives in Arizona. She’s not taken seriously. She was a total joke—she still kind of is a total joke—she’s not taken seriously by Arizonans.
“She couldn’t keep a job. She tried to do all kinds of media jobs, she tried to do an online talk show of her own, that completely bombed. She’s in a dynasty, just like anyone with the name “Bush” and she’s not taken seriously at all. She doesn’t deserve the prominence, the microphone that she has. And she gets that microphone and her mother gets that microphone because she’s anti-Trump.”
Becca simply crystallized what I have suspected for years. Meghan McCain is a lightweight who has milked the privilege of DNA and her last name. For the most part, if that is your fortune, good for you! But please don’t represent yourself as a conservative when your thought bubbles are vapid and inconsistent, and you mostly use your platform to trash Trump and his administration (just like her father), and trash grassroots conservatism.
Becca’s next response was particularly hilarious:
“She’s like the blind squirrel who sometimes finds the nut. She exhibits conservative thought occasionally.”
John McCain was well known for undercutting anything that did not advance the Republican elite agenda, and most of the grassroots couldn’t stand him, while the media loved him. Until he ran for President, then they treated him like they did every conservative. Once McCain lost and he went back to being the reasonable Republican Senator from Arizona, it was love all over again, especially in the age of Trump.
Becca agreed,
“There’s no secret that the McCain family is very flexible when it comes to their politics. What is best for the McCains. I don’t have positive thoughts about John McCain, I still feel like he sold us out.”
Meghan McCain has her father’s chops in cutting down those she doesn’t care for or disagrees with.
Before her television re-debut, McCain decided to get into a pissing match with the Arizona GOP and its chairwoman Dr. Kelli Ward. I am old enough to remember when Dr. Kelli Ward challenged Senator John McCain in 2016. Breitbart covered this:
“Dr. Ward has run the kind of gritty grassroots campaign that has defeated other longtime incumbents like Dick Lugar and Eric Cantor. Bolstered by an army of activists, volunteers, and anti-establishment groups Dr. Ward has tirelessly traveled the state in a warped RV for nearly two years. In March, Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz received more than 70% of the vote and Dr. Ward is counting on an anti-establishment surge to overcome being dramatically outspent by McCain and his money groups.”
While Trump went on to victory in 2016, Dr. Ward could not surmount the money wall or the Republican elite wall in the state. But the McCains never forget, and Meghan continues the grudge match against Dr. Ward and grassroots conservatives.
As Becca said,
“Her whole family is extremely spiteful.”
That spite was in full force in this reply to the Arizona GOP Twitter account.
Honestly whomever is running this twitter account can go to hell. https://t.co/mH2pMzb0YW
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) January 2, 2021
Chairwoman Ward then replied to that thread:
😂 😆 🤣 Good job, @AZGOP! Someone is #Triggered! https://t.co/M7kfTATLi7
— Dr. Kelli Ward 🇺🇸 (@kelliwardaz) January 2, 2021
McCain responded:
I think that was you and your mom…who voted for Uncle Joe? Who wants to be Kamala’s Ambassador to England? Who didn’t campaign for Republicans but instead backstabbed everyone from President @realDonaldTrump to me? That was ALL YOU. You’re a family of frauds.
— Dr. Kelli Ward 🇺🇸 (@kelliwardaz) January 3, 2021
Dr. Kelli Ward is a fighter who is not afraid to call the McCains out for exactly who they are. Becca took particular issue with Meghan McCain placing the losses of two Senate seats at the Arizona GOP’s feet. Really, it began with John McCain and his own selfish ambition.
“He [John McCain] sold us out by not resigning when he had the brain cancer. We still don’t have two fully vested senators. McCain passed away in late Summer of 2018. Our governor appointed someone, but it was only temporary. They had a former Arizona Senator Jon Kyl who did it for 2 months, which got us almost to the end of 2018. Governor Ducey had to appoint someone else, and that ended up being Martha McSally for two years. That did not sit well with many Arizonans, we’re very Western, independent thinkers. It does not sit well to get a seat that you did not earn. McSally is a loser. That’s how she’s been seen. So it wasn’t a stretch that Kelly took that seat away.
“November’s contest [2020] will only serve to fill the final two years of McCain’s term. Then voters will have to go through this election rigmarole all over again.”
Meghan McCain continued to battle with both Dr. Ward and the Arizona GOP, because she knows as long as she drapes herself in her father’s name and virtue, she will always come off smelling like a rose.
What is interesting is when her snark and virtue cannot win an argument. I have had this experience with her.
Back in the Summer of 2020, McCain tweeted about White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and how well coiffed she appeared to be. This was in the middle of everyone in the nation still under COVID restrictions, so McCain immediately went to the trope that McEnany must be breaking COVID regulations in order to look so polished.
There’s no way to know but this looks like professional hair and makeup to me. Is everyone else just bucking the safety rules and am I the asshole with 3 inches of grey hair and barely getting mascara on for our hit show every morning? I don’t get it! https://t.co/NcXyQyYIqq
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) May 15, 2020
I have a hit show! I shouldn’t have to suffer! Could you be any more vacuous?
I, and others, responded to the tweet, and not favorably:
You sound resentful. Some people learned how to do their hair in high school and college. Kayleigh went to Catholic high school, and from what I know about CS girls, they know how to polish.
— Jennifer Oliver O'Connell, BA, MPW, Eata Bita Pi (@asthegirlturns) May 15, 2020
I'm sure you've had servants as long as you can remember, but a lot of women are able to do basic things like use a curling wand and put eyeshadow on. Not sure why you're so shocked.
— Blaire White (@MsBlaireWhite) May 15, 2020
Exactly. My hair looks better than that, and I color my own roots. I've kept up with my basic hygiene. This is ridiculous that she thinks you have to go to a salon to look like that.
— GOPPouncer (@Mellecon) May 15, 2020
McCain didn’t have any snappy comebacks or a leg to stand on, so she deleted the tweet and scrubbed it from existence. Like many lightweights, whether conservative or liberal, instead of having an actual discussion, you pretend the point of discussion no longer exists. I would even respect an “agree to disagree”, but then it would still make news. You see, McCain would rather you talk about her fairytale life with Ben Domenech and their new baby, than the fact that she’s got empty stilettos.
Today, McCain decided to weigh in on the razor-thin election of Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker for a fourth term, and how one of her caucus actually was supposed to be quarantined after testing COVID positive, but came into D.C. for the sole purpose of voting for Pelosi. In McCain’s typical accusatory fashion, she used emojis to call out the allegations in the tweet she was quoting. I immediately responded back to McCain’s tweet, but also took a screen shot. Good thing I did, because to no one’s surprise, McCain deleted that tweet too.
I tweeted out the screen shot and two articles that reported on not only Pelosi’s very narrow win, but on Wisconsin Representative Gwen Moore, who tested COVID positive six days prior and still traveled to D.C. Hypocrisy much? There’s a lot of it going around these days.
@MeghanMcCain likes to post stuff then delete it, so this is the original tweet. Why would MM call something crazy that has been verified by legacy & ROC media? Pelosi barely made it over the finish line, and she allowed a member who tested COVID positive 6 days ago to vote. pic.twitter.com/BPuK8o2RJI
— Jennifer Oliver O'Connell, BA, MPW, Eata Bita Pi (@asthegirlturns) January 4, 2021
So which part is batshit guano? The part where her win was narrow (tight margins) https://t.co/IIDFQjsp9X or the part where one of her member's recently tested positive and came to vote anyway? https://t.co/6RN2OoVzwq https://t.co/XL3DF8rALN
— Jennifer Oliver O'Connell, BA, MPW, Eata Bita Pi (@asthegirlturns) January 4, 2021
I still have not received a response, and probably won’t. Maybe we’ll make it on Twitchy.
So, can Meghan McCain really be considered relevant? Not according to my, or Becca’s standards.
“Number 1, she’s not credible. Number 2, she’s not seen as some type of authority figure for conservatives.
“She’s not an authority of any type. She has a bigger microphone because she’s on a major national show, and because she criticizes not only Trump, but Republicans. She gets amplified.
“From time to time she does evince some conservatism on social media and sometimes on ‘The View’, but most of the time she’s not serious.”
Co-sign, Becca. And people who are serious conservatives should be the ones in front of a microphone. If ever there was a time we needed truly fresh, and truly conservative voices, it’s now.
Instead, we have someone from the fortunate sperm lottery pretending at it, while screaming on “The View”.
Sign up for our VIP program to get access to premium content for members only! Use code “OCONNELL” for a discount!