Tea Party prominent: Palin not presidential (Tancredo says McCain “nasty, mean” and “unstable”)

Tea Party prominent: Palin not presidential (Tancredo says McCain “nasty, mean” and “unstable”)
NRC.nl [with added redactions for McCain's foul language] ^ | 2010-02-28 | Tom-Jan Meeus

Posted on Sunday, February 28, 2010 12:45:27 PM by rabscuttle385

(snip)

His loathing for McCain has a long history. “I don’t like him,” Tancredo said. “He is not a very pleasant person. He is nasty, mean; the skin of an onion would look deep compared to his. He has a short fuse, he is almost peculiarly unstable.”

He still remembers his first encounter with the senator from Arizona. In 1999, Tancredo was elected to the House with 54 percent of the votes in his Colorado district. “When you win with less than 55 percent of the vote, you are seen as vulnerable. So then the party will go out to the superstars and say, can you please pick one or two vulnerables and do a fundraiser for them.” Somebody in McCain’s office picked him. “And I go, that’s great!” Tancredo recalled.

One day, he went over to the Senate and bumped into McCain in the elevator. “I had never met him. So I shake his hand to thank him for doing the fundraiser.” The senator then asked if he could count on Tancredo’s support for McCain-Feingold (a bipartisan campaign reform act McCain had drafted with Democratic senator Russell Feingold). Tancredo opposed this proposed regulation of political campaign financing, and he told McCain. “So I go: ‘I am voting no, I don’t like it. I actually think it’s terrible’.”

“It was like a bomb went off in his head. He exploded! He was screaming at me! It was, ‘When I come across the f**king street, you are…’ And, ‘You don’t know what the f**k you are talking about!’ And I said, ‘What?!’ I was just so taken aback. But then I went after him: ‘Hey, nobody told me you are coming to help me for a quid pro quo for a shit bill!’ It just got worse. It was really bad, I remember us getting out of the elevator and people stepped back way up because they couldn’t handle the screaming.”

The two never reconciled. “From there, it only went downhill,” according to Tancredo.

Tea Party prominent: Palin not presidential (Tancredo says McCain “nasty, mean” and “unstable”)

(snip)