Republican Thad Cochran on McCain: "Erratic...hotheaded...worries me"

By GottaLaff

It's all okay now. Thad and J Sid are the best of friends... as long as Thaddy doesn't cross him:

Notably mild-mannered Republican Sen. Thad Cochran shocked many earlier this year with comments about John McCain's volatile temper. He has since mended fences with the GOP presidential nominee.

But as first reported at sunherald.com, Cochran told the Sun Herald he witnessed a confrontation between McCain and a Sandinista rebel decades ago in which McCain "got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him."

John Sidney McCain: Abuse you can believe in.

[H]e said something that surprised many in a Boston Globe article in January about his longtime Senate colleague McCain.

"The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine," Cochran told the Globe. "He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

But they've made nice-nice since then. And by then, I mean:

But Cochran said he observed McCain engage in a physical confrontation with a Sandinista while participating in a diplomatic mission led by Sen. Bob Dole and others in the fall of 1987.

Sweet, grandfatherly, straight-talkin', beer baron John Sidney McThatWasThenThisIsNow? Hostile?

"McCain was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the guerilla group here at this end of the table and I don't know what attracted my attention," Cochran said. "But I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever. I don't know what he was telling him but I thought, good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission. I don't know what had happened to provoke John but he obviously got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him."

My friends, my dear friends... yikes.

What do Eyewitness Thaddy's people say nowadays?

"I think Sen. Cochran went into as much detail yesterday as is necessary to make the point that, though Sen. McCain has had problems with his temper, he has overcome them. Though Sen. Cochran saw the incident he described to you, decades have passed since then and he wanted to make the point that over the years he has seen Sen. McCain mature into an individual who is not only spirited and tenacious but also thoughtful and levelheaded..."

The news media endlessly cycles and recycles the Reverend Wright, flag pin, and "cling to guns" stories, but the "revered P.O.W. maverick's" disturbing and unpredictable history of violence gets a pass. Yeah, that's fair and balanced.

Imagine what the corporate media would say if that story had been about Barack Obama. Now imagine that unstable, spasmodic "hero" John Sidney McCain with his finger on The Button.

You can stop imagining now. You've been through enough.