The people who try to talk sense into Meghan McCain must be extremely optimistic, extremely patient, or extremely good with kids. Maybe all three.
Today's unfortunate volunteer was Sen. Cory Booker, who appeared on The View, and spent energy defending his gun control stance to McCain. She didn't present an actual counterpoint, or alternative point of view, of course. She just challenged him with the equivalent of a playground taunt, not once, but at least three times: "How are you gonna get my brother's guns, huh?"
She might as well have been telling Sen. Booker, "My brother's bigger than you, and he can beat you in a fight, and you and Beto are CRAZY if you think you can take him on, so THERE!"
SEN. BOOKER: So, my point is this. I'm not where Beto is in the way he's been talking about this issue...
McCAIN: GOOD because he's CRAZY.
SEN. BOOKER: Well, again, we should watch the way we talk about each other. Seriously, we keep tearing the character of other people down.
McCAIN; He has no problem doing it to me. He was very nasty to me about this.
SEN. BOOKER: But you and I both know that just because someone does something to us, doesn't mean we show the same disrespect to them.
McCAIN: Eh. I'm not running for president, with all due respect. And also, the way he talked about me inciting violence on this? I take very seriously, and I speak for a lot of red state Americans, whether he likes it or you like it or not, there's a lot of Republicans you're gonna have to win over.
SEE? I wasn't kidding. Patient with children is my guess. ("We don't call people names, Meghan..." and "Just because someone else did it to us, Meghan...")
She tries throwing her brother into the mix again, and Sen. Booker has to school her about fear-mongering.
SEN. BOOKER: Look, machine guns, we don't have them on the streets anymore, because in the 1980s we banned them.
McCAIN: Right.
SEN. BOOKER: And we had a practical way to do that. From Australia to New Zealand, they banned them and they got them off the streets.
McCAIN: So, you're gonna go to my brother's house...
SEN. BOOKER: NO. Come on. We can find the evidence-based way to accomplish this as a country. Other countries have done it. We did it with machine guns. Why are we playing into fear-mongerers that wanna give this vision that there's gonna be people showing up at your house and taking your guns away?
That was excellent. Good for him for explaining her fear-mongering to her, no matter how hopeless the chances of her understanding, absorbing, and changing course might be. And no matter how much the writer/editor in me wished he had also schooled her on the awkward phrasing of "Just tell me semantically how..." I understand he's only got so much time and energy.
She went on to dismiss the popularity of his plans for gun control because they won't play in red states like Arizona. Sen. Booker said, "That's why YOU can't play into that narrative."
Valiant effort, Senator, but I do believe she is a lost cause.
