Really, What Is A Maverick?

"Just a couple of mavericks." Over and over, tired of hearing it. So what is a Maverick? Where did this term originate? What does it mean? And why would John McCain and Sarah Palin be running around saying it so often?




According to NY Times:

There’s that word again: maverick. In Thursday’s vice-presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican candidate, used it to describe herself and her running mate, Senator John McCain, no fewer than six times, at one point calling him “the consummate maverick.”

But to those who know the history of the word, applying it to Mr. McCain is a bit of a stretch — and to one Texas family in particular it is even a bit offensive.

Offensive? To who? The actual Maverick family, that's who.

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.

According to Raw Story> about the real Maverick:

According to Fontaine, the real "original maverick" was her grandfather, Maury Maverick, "a radical politician from San Antonio who served two terms in Congress (1935-1939). There, he led a bloc of progressive Democrats who sought to push Roosevelt and the New Deal to the left. The press quickly labeled this group 'The Mavericks.' While hugely popular with the the many poor Hispanics in his district, Maverick was far too liberal for the conservative Texas Democratic establishment. In 1938 he lost the Democratic party primary after being slandered as a communist."

"Grandfather Maury was no coward," Fontaine told Huffington Post's Charles Karel Bouley. "He chased the Klan right out of San Antonio once, stood up to the mob... Maury was burned in effigy in San Antonio, for his defense of members of the Communist Party's right to assemble, for his defense of the Hispanic community, support for those who didn't have a voice."

Didn't McCain say one of his heroes was Roosevelt in the second Presidential debate? Well, John, hate to break it to ya, a maverick tried to steer your hero to the Left. LOL

So McCain and Palin run around calling themselves a maverick? This family seems pretty upset about it too.

"It's driving our family crazy," Fontaine says, "upsetting us and the legacy of my family, and we really with the campaign would stop misusing the word and the phrase. ... And Palin, I'm not sure she even knows the history of the word of or my family, but one thing is clear to all of my family, she truly is not a Maverick."

The family states it clearly, that a Maverick is someone without a brand.

Considering the family’s long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, “is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.”

“It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ ”

“He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.”

I can imagine if my family had a political history attached to our name, and I kept hearing Sarah Palin, with her Canadian accent, saying it over and over, it would start to irritate me too.