John McCain, evidently,  is not accepting his defeat gracefully:

The meeting in the Capitol’s Strom Thurmond Room on March 11 was a Republican effort led by Sens. McCain of Arizona, John Thune of South Dakota, and Mel Martinez of Florida to reach out to Hispanics. But two people who attended the session say they were taken aback by McCain’s anger.

What began as a collegial airing of views abruptly changed when McCain spoke about immigration, according to these sources, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. Anonymity was also requested by a third source, who was not at the meeting but was told, independently of the other two, that McCain had displayed his notorious temper.

“He was angry,” one source said. “He was over the top. In some cases, he rolled his eyes a lot. There were portions of the meeting where he was just staring at the ceiling, and he wasn’t even listening to us. We came out of the meeting really upset.”

McCain’s message was obvious, the source continued: After bucking his party on immigration, he had no sympathy for Hispanics who are dissatisfied with President Obama’s pace on the issue. “He threw out [the words] ‘You people — you people made your choice. You made your choice during the election,’ ” the source said. “It was almost as if [he was saying] ‘You’re cut off!’ We felt very uncomfortable when we walked away from the meeting because of that.”

McCain’s spokesperson said that when he was just offering a bit of “straight talk,” but quite frankly, the people making excuses for him don’t make his actions sound any better.

“What I saw… was John McCain saying, ‘Look, I didn’t get a lot of support from the Hispanic community,’ which he deserved to have had,” Martinez said. “It frustrated me. It frustrated him. [McCain said,] ‘You guys thought this guy [Obama] was going to be your savior. Where is his leadership?’ I sort of echo that.

Firstly, the only people who ever said that Obama was a “savior” or “the Messiah” were Republicans.  They really need to stop believing their own hype.  Secondly, if I read this article correctly, basically, McCain only supported immigration reform to try to win over Latinos in the election, and now that he’s lost, screw ‘em.    Good to know.  Coldly calculated political positions are very mavericky.

Look, I think it’s great that McCain tried to push forward on comprehensive immigration reform, and didn’t cave in to the anti-immigrant wing of the party.  But anyone who thought that the Latino vote was going to break Republican in 2008 was drinking the crazy juice.  For one thing, the Republican Party spent a good couple of years race baiting and talking about how immigration was destroying us all.  It was Democratic led towns whose police forces were signing agreements with ICE.  And no matter what Bush may have said or felt, his adminstration led those horrible, despicable raids, which were rife with racial profiling and incredibly destructive to so many communities.

Then there’s this fact, which might be a shocker: Latinos are people.  It’s true!  Regular people, with a multitude of interests, who care about a large scope of issues, just like white people.  So, it’s just some folks who voted for Obama did so because of health care, or the Iraq war, or tax cuts for 95% of the population, or to eliminate torture, or because of the economy, or because of Sarah Palin, or because the Republicans proved themselves incapable of managing a country.  There were plenty of reasons to vote for Obama instead of McCain.

John McCain’s problem throughout the campaign was that he thought he just deserved to be president.  He’d paid his dues, now it was his time, and why didn’t people understand that?  I guess that attitude hasn’t changed.