McCain’s new GOP

Since 2000, John McCain has “relished playing the skunk at George W. Bush’s GOP picnic,” said Peter Canellos in The Boston Globe’s Political Intelligence blog. At the first full night of the Republican convention, “the skunk took over the picnic,” and the party joined him in pushing aside the man it nominated four and eight years ago.

Welcome to the “bizarro GOP” convention, said John Dickerson in Slate. Republican “stalwarts” cheered John McCain for “bucking entrenched interests, even in his own party,” and for promising to change a situation in Washington D.C. mostly created by Bush and his GOP allies.

McCain isn’t running against his party, said Rod Dreher in BeliefNet’s Crunchy Con blog. He showed that his GOP is “going to run against Barack Obama and the New York Times” and other media outlets this year. And that’s smart, especially after “the anti-Palin freakout over the past four days.”

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