Where’s Johnny?

That Meghan McCain, Newly Self-Appointed Republican Rebrander, is going to give her Daddy quite a headache next year. Remember the father was going to do all in his power to help Barack Obama meet the challenges facing our nation? You might recall that promise from not even six months ago, but that was before McCain found himself a primary challenge from the right.

McCain’s opponent, Chris Simcox, founded the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps and announced this week that he will challenge the 2008 GOP presidential nominee for the Senate in 2010. Simcox is quite conservative, and tired of McCain’s brand of big-spending, immigrant-friendly Republicanism.

“John McCain has failed miserably in his duty to secure this nation’s borders and protect the people of Arizona from the escalating violence and lawlessness,” Simcox said in a statement. “He has fought real efforts over the years at every turn, opting to hold our nation’s border security hostage to his amnesty schemes.”

Meanwhile, McCain’s daughter can’t stop ticking the GOP off. First she called on the party to support same-sex marriage, accused them of being scared “s–tless” of the future, and is now accusing Karl Rove of being “creepy” because he follows her on Twitter. She thinks Rove and Vice President Cheney and the rest of them should stop criticizing our new president (as President George W. Bush has refused to do, we might add) and she told them firmly (on “The View”) that they “had their eight years” and should “go away.”

I wonder how that’s going to go over with Simcox. Poor McCain only had a few months off from the campaign trail, and let’s face it, he had been running for president nonstop since 1999. As I described in my column this week, McCain is doing anything but helping Obama solve the tough issues, and is staking out conservative positions on anything he can. He blasted Obama’s cap-and-trade plan in a speech this week, repeatedly criticizing the administration throughout, is silent on healthcare and immigration and called the release of the memos on torture a “serious mistake,” despite his strong opposition to torture.

It’s hard to cross the aisle, bridge differences and put Country First when you are trying to get reelected. And it’s hard to get reelected in a GOP primary when your daughter is trying to make a name for herself slamming the party. Something tells me McCain will win, and be agreeing with his daughter and President Obama a lot more come 2011.

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