McCain's 2000 Vote

Who did John and Cindy McCain vote for in 2000? Arianna Huffington says it wasn't George Bush:

Original Post: At a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election, I was talking to a man and his wife, both prominent Republicans. The conversation soon turned to the new president. "I didn't vote for George Bush" the man confessed. "I didn't either," his wife added. Their names: John and Cindy McCain (Cindy told me she had cast a write-in vote for her husband).

The fact that this man was so angry at what George Bush had done to him, and at what Bush represented for their party, that he did not even vote for him in 2000 shows just how far he has fallen since then in his hunger for the presidency. By abandoning his core principles and embracing Bush -- both literally and metaphorically -- he has morphed into an older and crankier version of the man he couldn't stomach voting for in 2000.

As you might expect, this prompted some, er, reaction from the McCain campaign:

Asked why Huffington would make up her story about McCain not voting for Bush, longtime McCain aide Mark Salter - who has previously tangled with the Huffington Post - ripped into her. "Why would she make something up? Because she's a flake, and a poser, and an attention seeking diva. And that's on the record."

Mark Steyn at NR reminds us that McCain was the keynote speaker at Arianna's 2000 shadow convention. It seems they are not as friendly as they once were.

About the vote, yeah it's probably true. Passive aggressive voting is entirely in line with what we know about John McCains character and temper.