I’ve been looking at a lot of John McCain’s speech from last night. He looked good, I will say that. But I thought the speech was average. Now, John McCain I had a lot of respect for, I really did. He is a war hero and no one can take that honor away from him. He served his country with honor and valor and I respect that and always have. I like John McCain. I liked him better when he was a real maverick. And he made a lot of noise last night about being a maverick. I believed he was a maverick when he put together the bill on immigration because he felt there was a better way to take care of what was going on with illegal immigration in the country. He had a smart way of taking care of business and I respected him for that and liked him for that.

I respected him that though he didn’t feel that abortion was right, he understood that choice was necessary. I appreciated him for that and that’s what made him a maverick to me. The many times he clashed heads with the administration — the many things he said about the war and how he felt it should be done and the things I believed he could have brought to the table. I respected him for that. I believed in him for that. And when he ran before, against George W. Bush, I respected him and felt that he would have made a much better president — if we had to have a Republican — than Bush. So I have a lot of respect for John McCain.

I don’t agree with him on a lot of issues. I especially do not agree with him now that he has actually become not a maverick Republican, but a Republican Republican. He stood with people that he spoke about in previous terms as being people who do not speak for the country. He spent time with people that you have to spend time with. You have to make the bridges, you have to build the bridges, you have to be a connector force. But the one thing John McCain never did, he never pretended to be a Republican talking head. But now, after last night’s speech, John McCain is a Republican talking head. He is those people he spoke out against. He is those people that he worked to get to see a better way to do things. He is no longer a maverick — he is the same as everybody else. That distresses me. It distresses me a ton.