John McCain Flirts with Reasonability, Thinks the GOP Should Maybe Leave Abortion ‘Alone’

Realizing, perhaps, that his political party might soon be going the way of dimetrodon, former presidential candidate and children’s party Yosemite Sam impersonator John McCain went on Fox News Sunday and said that, um, maybe the GOP should pitch “a bigger tent” on immigration reform, and also, just throwing it out there, leave abortion “alone.”

We are going to give a much more positive agenda. It can’t be just being against the Democrats… You’ve got to be for things, and we have to give them something like the ‘Contract for America.’

McCain added that, although he was very proud of his personal pro-life stance, he doesn’t think that a creaky old anachronism like himself should be wading into the public abortion debate.

As far as young women are concerned, I don’t think anybody like me – I can state my position on abortion, but other than that, leave the issue alone when we are in the kind of economic situation, and frankly, national security situation that we’re in.

That all sounds reasonable, but it’s hard to imagine that McCain has much ideological influence within a political party that seems to have come unstuck in time and is currently having a collective anxiety attack about how alarmingly out of touch its platform is with the social progress of this country.