Ol' Man McCain is no maverick despite what Mike Rosen says

Much as the press - including local Republican apparatchik like Mike Rosen - would want you to believe, John McCain is no maverick:

We all know McCain is supposed to be a maverick. That phony meme has been drummed into voters' heads for nearly a decade now. Yet as Media Matters for America has shown, the media use the label "maverick" despite the many times McCain has fallen in line with the Bush administration or the Republican Party establishment, a lifetime rating of 83 by the American Conservative Union, and his recent rightward shift on high-profile issues such as immigration and taxes. (For the longer, in-depth dissections of that McCain's media free ride, go here.)