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In some ways you have to admire the political performance skills of someone like a John McCain. On the one hand he recognizes that the Republicans have a problem attracting Hispanic voters, one that will make it difficult if not impossible for Republicans to win the presidency in the not too distant future. And on the other hand he will likely vote with his wingnut conscience against Judge Sonia Sotomayor, as he did in 1999 for the U.S. Appeals Court.

MCCAIN: On the issue of the Hispanic voter, we have to do a lot more. We Republicans have to recruit and elect Hispanics to office. And I don't mean just because they're Hispanics, but they represent a big part of the growing population in America. And we have a lot of work to do there. And I am of the belief that unless we reverse the trend of Hispanic voter registration, we have a very, very deep hole that we've got to come out of.

And no doubt when McCain makes his usual political calculations and votes against Sotomayor for the Supreme Court he will dress up the decision as a matter of high principle, disavowing the "politically expedient route" of voting for Sotomayor simply because she's a woman and a Latina, glossing over her many years of experience or her record. And a certain percentage of Wingnuttia will swallow his malarkey, as they always do, while another part will remain skeptical of this faux moderate. In the end, John McCain will do what's best for John McCain.

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From State of the Union April 12, 2009. John King asks Gen. Odierno if US combat troops will be gone from Iraq by the 2011 deadline. You can read the transcript with the rest of the interview here. King does his best during the entire interview to prod the General into criticizing the President, but he doesn't take the bait as in this example.

KING: General Odierno, you are the father of the surge strategy. You pushed for it when even many of your commanders wanted to get troops out of Iraq. How hard is it to develop a rapport with the president of the United States who thought your strategy was a reckless escalation?

ODIERNO: Well, first off, he's our commander-in-chief, and as the commander-in-chief, we take direction from him.

He has -- in all of the meetings I've had with him, he's very attentive, he is very -- he listens, he is incredibly intelligent, he talks through the issues and we discuss it. He makes a decision and then we execute those decisions, and that's all you can expect out of your commander-in-chief.

And he's -- and I've been very pleased with the interaction that I've been able to have with him.

Does anyone think if we had a Republican president right now that John King would be trying to get a sitting general to publicly disagree with their policies or ask them if they're capable of following orders?

Transcript of the above portion below the fold.

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Debbie Wasserman Schultz on CNN's State of the Union responding to John King questioning her with the media's latest talking points on bipartisanship and about what's going to happen to the bill once it goes to conference committee. She explains that Republicans refused the hand of bipartianship. The only people surprised by that are the media.

KING: As you know, the new president came to town promising a new era of bipartisanship. Eight years of George W. Bush, eight years of Bill Clinton, not much true bipartisanship in this town. Your speaker after the Senate compromise was reached on Friday, made clear she doesn't like it. She said this, "Washington seems consumed in the process argument of the bipartisanship when the rest of the country says they need this bill."

The process argument of bipartisanship. The president said it is a critical spirit to have in this town. Your boss in the House, the speaker, doesn't seem to think it's important.

SCHULTZ: On the contrary, Speaker Pelosi has made bipartisanship and reaching out in the Republicans in the House a priority. We made sure that we had markup after markup in committee this week and in the last few weeks which included Republican amendments that we heard, that some that we accepted.

We reached out our hand across the aisle, asked them to help craft this legislation. That was rejected. So we have made an effort at reaching out our hand across the aisle. They really seem to be more interested in making sure that this whole process fails. It's really baffling to me why they don't want to pass an economic recovery package. They'll have to answer the American people as to why that is.

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Lindsey Graham on CNN's State of the Union responding to John King's question about the closing of Guantanamo Bay calls it a "well run jail" and an "image problem" for the United States. King gives him an opportunity to continue with the 61 prisoners have been released to the battlefield propoganda that we saw earlier on Meet the Press from John Boehner as well. Talking points accomplished.

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Hey look who else apparently has their fax machine from the RNC in good working order. John King. King opens up this discussion on the stimulus package with Mike Pence by citing the nonexistent CBO report which was debunked by the Huffington Post. I guess it's a good thing these guys don't get their "news" from blogs, huh?