What Really Happened to John McCain?

Those of us who didn’t just surface from a subterranean fallout shelter know that there are two John McCains. The circa 2000 John McCain was the “Maverick” John McCain (because apparently he was the legend of the west). While technically a republican, most republicans bitched about him and democrats considered him to be one of the few tolerable ones.

Then, ’round about 2005 or so, John McCain changed. Right when he should have been distancing himself from Bush, he started laboriously tonguing his ass crack. Religious nuts Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who he had previously criticized, suddenly became his pals. The Bush tax cuts he voted against were suddenly a good idea.

There were many theories as to why this sudden change occurred. Some thought it was just pandering to the party base for his inevitable 2008 presidential run. Others thought a specific deal had actually been struck, i.e. Karl Rove as his campaign strategist in exchange for continuous public blow-jobs given to Bush.

But I think I’ve finally figured out what happened, as evidenced by the following picture.

This post was inspired by this thread on democraticunderground.com. The McCain picture used was supplied by user Chulanowa.

Republican Talking Points Bingo

How to Play

• Make some friends
• Buy some beer (optional)
• Gather them
• Enter the number of players in the box over there and press the button
• Print the page that pops up
• Give one sheet to each player
• Turn on Fox News
• Mark off each talking point as you hear it
• The first player to mark an entire row (up, down, or diagonally) should call out “Clinton’s fault!” and be declared the winner
• Repeat until nauseated

Additional Rules

• Talking points inside quotation marks should only be marked if the words are spoken more or less exactly. There is play in this though. Obviously “Weapons of Mass Destruction” can be marked off if they say “WMD’s” and “Al Qaeda wants to kill your children” should count for “Terrorists want to kill your family”. You get the idea. It doesn’t have to be exact, but pretty darn close.
• Items not in quotes (which are also incidentally in italics) are more along the lines of talking themes. Obviously, any type of gay bashing will count for the Gay Bashing category. It’s not like they’re going to say “Let’s get back to the gay bashing for a moment, Sean”. Well, not often anyway.
• Any game-related disputes should be settled by voting with verifiable paper ballots. If paper ballots are not available, the strongest player should seize control in a (possibly bloodless) revolution.

I am not the first person to have this idea (see here and here), but as far as I can tell I am the first person to actually make the game. If anyone knows of prior art, I will gladly acknowlege and link to it.

The talking points I used are a set currently being used in the right-wing media. Over time they will grow stale. If this turns out to be popular, I will do my best to keep them updated.

The randomness of the game cards would improve with more talking points. Mrs. FatDave and I were only able to come up with 31. If you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments, and I will add my favorites to the program.

This was inspired by the Right Wing World segment of The Stephanie Miller Show