McCain's daughter questions Tea Party movement
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/02/08/art.meghan0208.gi.jpg caption="Sen. McCain's daughter Meghan said Monday that young people are turned off by the Tea Party movement."]
(CNN) – Sen. John McCain's daughter called into question the political stature of the Tea Party movement Monday and sharply criticized a former congressman for his controversial comments at a recent major gathering of these conservative activists.
Former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colorado, slammed President Obama on the first night of the Tea Party convention last week in Nashville. Tancredo, known for his outspoken views on illegal immigration and his disdain for Sen. McCain, charged during his speech that "People who could not even spell the word 'vote', or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama."
Tancredo also expressed relief that Sen. McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, lost his White House bid. "Thank God John McCain lost the election," Tancredo said.
Related: Tancredo gave 'fantastic speech,' convention organizer says
On Monday, Meghan McCain fired back.
"People were saying that this is the new movement in the Republican Party," McCain said during an appearance on 'The View.' "I did not want to go [to last week's convention]. I have (a) very much different, ideological differences with them."
And she described Tancredo's comments as "innate racism."
"And I think it's why young people are turned off by this movement. And I'm sorry [but] revolutions start with young people. Not with 65-year-old people talking about literacy tests and people who can't say the word 'vote' in English. It's ridiculous."
Meghan McCain also decried the divisiveness and partisanship in American politics and the growing populist rage that has powered the Tea Party movement.
"Maya Angelou says we have more in common than we do apart," she said. "We need to use this message in politics more."
Meghan McCain added, "This rhetoric will continue to turn off young voters and anybody that says different is smoking something. Period."
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The Tea Party movement is a celebration of ignorance. When they talk about someone being "elite," they mean "educated." Palin said the we don't need a law professor, we need a Commander in Chief. We need both and she qualifies for neither.
The President takes and oath to defend the nation AND the Constitution. I dislike, distrust, and abhor those who ridicule education and take pride in their lack of it.
Palin ridicules Obama for using a teleprompter for speeches while she writes notes on her hand because she apparently isn't capable of handling a teleprompter. Fox News stopped broadcasting the Q&A with Obama and the Republicans when it became obvious that the President was making them look ill-prepared, disingenuous, and churlish. They didn't get the "gotcha" moment they had planned because the President does have a good education. We need to encourage more of that.
That "hopey, changey stuff" is working well. We just need more of it.
This guy Tom Tancredo seems to be a big moron and looser. With people like him in the tea party, I figure an early demise of the tea party mvement.
She is much wiser than her father.
There doesn't seem to be much between her pretty little ears.
"Innate racism," whatever that's supposed to mean, followed by a quote from a hugely overrated writer. From someone who'd be a non-person but for her choice of father.
Is she looking forward to the day when whites become a minority in a nation founded by Europeans? She’ll be finding out how little we all have in common long before that day arrives. Yep, Maya was wrong about that. Hard to believe, I know.
Why is this news?
Who thinks McCains daughters thought are important?
I'm a moderate/conservative who voted for Obama. Meghan, people like you are definitely the best hope for the future of the the Republican Party. There is no way the current political atmosphere can be sustained much longer. Those who cannot or will not recognize this will be relegated to the fringes (I hope).
Why does this get press? Just because she is Senator McCain's daughter. She is not a leader in the GOP and has done nothing. The only reason this is covered is because the bias media loves to play up disagreements within the GOP
As a life long Democrat, I really like this young lady. She seems to have a good head on her shoulders and is not afraid to speak her mind.
I'm liking this young lady more and more each day. An intelligent and open-minded person who happens to be a Republican. What a novel idea. Thanks, Meghan!
Meghan...your father served our nation well while in the military. However, as a Senator, he was wrong on immigration and was not a true conservative. Tancredo has his own style of speaking, but what he says does ring true...ACORN and other organizations like it have participated in massive voter registration fraud. In 2006, the SEIU would have voter registration drives during the loud, illegal alien protests all across the country. The left sees amnesty as a recruitment for new Democratic voters. Your father, Lindsay Graham and Senator Arlen Specter were the famed "axis of amnesty" to the detriment of the American worker. You don't speak for all "young people", Meghan. Get a clue!
spoiled brat mccain is about as far left as they come unless she is deliberately trying to destroy her father's career.
Comments, such as Tancredo's, are rude and insulting, and do not speak to people in a credible way. If you want to get a valid point across to someone, then speak in plain English and tell people what your valid disagreements are. It is very unimpressionable for a politician to "name-call" and not speak intelligently. I think young Americans would listen to a valid argument.
I agree with her. I'm a conservative Republican and I believe the Democrats are the only ones gaining from the Tea Party movement. MSNBC should be giving the Tea Party movement extra coverage, it plays right into their design. Just add a laugh track and play this convention video on Saturday Night Live, it's that stupid.
I hope people like you get more traction in your party.
As a diehard Democrat, I have to say that Meghan McCain is so much more in tune with the pulse of America (especially our youth) than Sarah "Palm Reader" Palin – it is not even funny. You go girl.
The McCains are has-beens and hopefully J.D. Hayworth will knock that whole dysfunctional family out of politics this year and they can go into political obscurity like the Bush family and (hopefully in 2012) the Hussein Obama family. Out with the old and in with the new! The Tea Party is finally something different than the same Republi-Crat stalemate we've had for so long!
If the Republicans want any chance at winning back the White House, or even the Congressional majority, they will need far more of their people speaking the same amount of common sense that the intelligent Ms. McCain speaks. While bonehead conservatives like Ann Coulter bash her for her dissent, they fail to realize that the majority of Americans are are as level-headed as Ms. McCain and do not belong to the fringe right or the fringe left of either party, but rather ride the middle of the fence.
Can't the Republicans come upi with something more imaginative than "Tea Party"? Hasn't that been used already?
You are one of the only bright lights of the Republican Party. Your dad was once a shining star of the party but suddenly he changed.