"I do believe that unless we start reaching out to minorities and women, and honestly start supporting the LGBT community there is no more future for the Republican party.”"

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Meghan McCain: The right is wrong
By Hadas Gold, October 20, 2014

Meghan McCain, always outspoken, says she’s got one big regret — calling Rep. Michele Bachmann a “poor man’s Sarah Palin.”

“That’s the one if I could take it back I would, because I just think it’s so linear and so nasty,” McCain said in an interview with POLITICO. “And I’m not a big fan of attacking another woman anymore.”

The two are now friends, and the congresswoman has even appeared on McCain’s show, “Take Part Live” on the Pivot Network.

“It’s so crazy … she’s not the type of person you’d think I connect with,” McCain added. “It’s just with her being a woman in politics, being an actual politician, we really bonded.”

But McCain said she doesn’t regret the comments she’s made about Sarah Palin herself. McCain’s lamented the fact that she’s still connected to her father’s former running mate and recently referred to her as a kind of “crazy aunt.” In her book “Dirty Sexy Politics,” McCain slammed Palin for bringing so much drama and stress to the campaign, noting she may have been one of the reasons her father lost.

“You know Sarah Palin, some of the stuff I said, again I would maybe term differently,” McCain told POLITICO. “But I think the criticism I have said of her is fair. I’m surprised how much attention it still gets, just because people still talk about her all the time and I understand the curiosity, but at a certain point I wish it wouldn’t make as much news as it does, but I guess people will always love to hear about it.”

McCain said her bare-it-all personality still gets her in trouble with her senator father, who she thinks wishes she was more like another famous political daughter — Chelsea Clinton.

“I did an interview with Playboy about a year and a half, two years ago, where I did the 20 questions and I was a little too candid,” she said, referring to her answers that included phrases like “I love sex” and “I’m strictly dickly.”

“He was not pleased at all,” McCain said of her father. “That’s actually one of the few fights we’ve ever gotten in about things I’ve done publicly. He was just so embarrassed. And he was like, ‘Why can’t you be like Chelsea Clinton?’ … He didn’t really say that but that’s what he’s thinking in his mind. So I just try to curb it a little more. I can’t really regret things you just have to move on and live your life.”

Though she now has her own show and career, McCain said she doesn’t mind that she will always be connected to her famous father. Without him, she said, she wouldn’t be where she is now.

“I’m nothing but proud,” Meghan McCain said. “I think you have to make peace with it. When I’m 100 years old, if I make it that long, when I die, probably the first tag line will be John McCain’s daughter, and I’m so proud of him and proud of my family’s legacy and our life, so I don’t have a problem with it. People can say that to me all day long.”

But, that doesn’t mean the two have had a meeting of the minds on their political beliefs. She’s a Republican, but McCain supports socially liberal causes like gay marriage. She and her mother, Cindy McCain, famously posed for the “NO H8” campaign in 2009, protesting California’s Proposition 8 to ban gay marriage. Her father supported the ban.

“People, I think, want us to be at home throwing food at each other or something, but it’s really respectful, honestly,” she explained. “He was asked one time about how he thinks about my stance on marriage equality and his answer was, ‘She represents a generation that I don’t.’ And I think that’s such a respectful answer. He’s 78 years old, there’s such a generation gap. But there’s nothing but respect. I couldn’t live my life the way I do if my parents weren’t supportive. I respect his point of view and he respects mine.”

On “Take Part Live,” McCain doesn’t toe the GOP line on issues like voter ID laws and climate change, and says she’s used now to attacks from conservatives.

“Every day of my life I come against a conservative who wants me to shut up,” McCain said. “I do believe I’m right and they are wrong. I do believe that unless we start reaching out to minorities and women, and honestly start supporting the LGBT community there is no more future for the Republican party.”

McCain said the vitriol she encounters from some in her own party only pushes her to work harder, particularly as she tries to to reach the millennial demographic.

“My experience is authenticity and honesty always works best with people my age and younger, and even older,” said McCain, who turns 30 this week. “Millennials specifically really respond to keeping it real about your opinions. I think they can smell BS a mile away. It’s a cultural shift that’s been going on maybe … the last five to 10 years, and that I think is the easiest way, just don’t bullshit them around.”
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