Video: McCain hammered at Arizona town hall for pushing Syria intervention

Via the Blaze and TPM, a small but welcome comeuppance for a guy whose big problem with Obama’s plan to intervene Syria is that it’s not ambitious enough. He held two town halls yesterday, in fact, and the video below apparently captures the less rowdy of the two. According to the Arizona Daily Star, the “mostly unsympathetic” crowd in Tucson included two people who had to be removed and one veteran who “walked out of the meeting during McCain’s answer to his question because he didn’t like what he was hearing.”

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Don’t accuse Maverick of being implacably pro-intervention, though, no matter what video games you see him playing during congressional hearings on Syria:

McCain grew impatient with a journalist who asked a question suggesting that he had made up his mind on Syria.

“Do you think I would be having a town-hall meeting if I had my mind totally made up? Do you?” McCain responded. “Well, you’re asking a dumb question. You’re really asking dumb questions.”

This is, by the way, not atypical in how constituents are reacting to Republicans on Syria. Your morning read is this NYT piece in which several GOP congressmen marvel at the near-unanimity of opposition to intervening that they’re hearing from people they talk to.

Mr. Cole’s constituent experience is not isolated. Representative Mick Mulvaney, a Republican swept into power in 2010 in military-focused South Carolina on a platform of small government, said that in his three-plus years in Congress, no issue had elicited as passionate a response as Syria. And, he added, “to say it’s 99 percent against would be overstating the support.”

Of the 1,000 or so calls and e-mails he has received, three supported some kind of response. And two-thirds of the correspondents have never reached out to him before.

Representative Candice S. Miller, Republican of Michigan, said she was at a peach festival parade last weekend in her district, an event that does not typically draw the type of constituent who is overly political. But as she made her way down the parade route, one person after another urged her to vote no on any authorization of force in Syria.

“It was not a political event at all,” Ms. Miller said. “But there were a lot of people, older veterans especially in their hats, all saying, ‘No on Syria!’  “

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Senior Republican aides in the House tell Politico they expect, at most, 50 to 60 GOPers to vote yes. We’ll see what happens after O’s big speech on Tuesday night, but right now that seems optimistic.


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