I’ve probably got a few new assholes symbolically torn in my hide by now over at Vodka Pundit, where I’ve been engaged in the futile and thankless task of talking common sense and reason to a bunch of people that like to think of themselves as conservatives. To join in the fun, or just to stare at the blood, look fo ra post entitled (Way) Too Early Handicapping.
Most people of course know what the standard definition of a conservative is. They pride themselves on being fiscally responsible (remember now, I said the “standard” definition), and they believe in small, limited government, law and order, a strong national defense, low taxes, lessening of bureacracy, limited regulation of businesses, non interference in state matters where the powers of the federal government are not expressly defined, and a strict constructionist interpretation of the constitution.
In regards to social issues they also tend to be conservative (though not necessarily always). As such they tend to be “Pro-Life” (read Anti-Abortion).
Most of these standard definitions, by and large, if not all of them, perfectly fit Arizona Senior Senator John McCain. Had he lived in the forties and fifties, he might well have given Ohio Senator Robert Taft a run for his money for the title of “Mr. Republican”.
Listen to a conservative Republican of today refer to Senator McCain, and you would think he was referring to the spawn of Satan. When you think of the relatively new phrase RINO (Republican In Name Only), you think of John McCain. It is almost as though the term was invented for and inspired by him. I fact, I’m almost certain that to be the case.
These conservative Republicans are up in arms at the prospect of a McCain run for the Presidency of The United States under the Republican label. Just as John Kerry was swiftboated in the 2004 eection, some of the same players have now attempted to float a trial balloon to do the same to McCain. Suppossedly, there are rumours circulating to the effect that McCain, while a Prisoner Of War in Viet Nam, colluded with his captors. He may have broke under torture, or indeed may never have been truly tortured at all, despite what to them is the exxaggerated at best and totally made up at worse fiction of his incarceration during some five years or more of that conflict. In return for special treatment, including his own private, comfortable quarters, and a live in maid and sex kitten, he relinquished all kinds of vital information, pertaining to American tactics and strategy, and who knows what all else.
And of course we all know about the half breed mulatto baby he had by a black mistress which we all learned about during the course of the 2000 Republican primary contest in
Before I go on, I want to make it clear, I am not a supporter of Senator John McCain. As I said on Vodka Pundit, in exactly these words-he is too damned conservative for me. There are other things. I still have reservations about his integrity of the past, but this based solely and exclusively on his involvement in the nineteen eighties as a Freshamn Senator with the so-called Keating Five. He was one of the ones mired in this banking scandal, yet there was never enough evidence for him to be indicted, along with the older son of then Vice-President George Herbert Walker Bush.
Of course, you never hear this bandied about, though this scandal caused the crash of the Savings And Loan Industry, necessitating a massive federal bailout. You never hear it mentioned, of course, because it involved a member of the Bush family.
I also have reservations due to his concerns about the treatment of prisoners of war, which has been greatly exxaggerated, for the most part. He wants them treated according to the Geneva Convention. I feel this is giving them a status they do not deserve. It’s not that I think they should be painfully or brutally tortured, it’s just that I don’t think they should be recognized as legitimate armed combatants. I believe in coercive interrogation when it comes to them. McCain does not. That is an honest difference of opinion and is probably inspired by his own time in a Prisoner Of War camp.
Still, the man is a hero, and is deserving of respect, until such time as he does something, or something comes out about his past involvement with Keating, that proves otherwise.
So why do conservatives hate him so much? I think it has to do precisely with his integrity-not his lackof it. This is a man who has gone on record as excoriating the out of control spending exhibited by members of his own party, in addition to that of the Democrats. He has gone on record as being extremely critical of the culture of special interests and PACS that has pervaded
He has approached this issue on a non-partisan level in words, and on a bi-partisan level in deed, as witness his co-sponsorship with Wisconsin Senator Russ feingold of the Campaign Contributions Reform Bill. For all the bills faults-and they are legion-at least McCain did draw attntion to this problem, and in fact ran his campaign on it in 2000, touring the country by bus in what was billed as “The Straight Talk Express”. He won the New Hampshire Republican primary that year in an upset over George W. Bush, whose operatives took off the kid gloves afterwards. The rest is history. Relastions between Bush and McCain have been strained, barely cordial. McCain, like Lieberman, was a recipient of “The Kiss”.
Since then, McCain has towed the line, and as I said on Vodka Pundit, shame on him for that. Still, he knows, understands fully, that this is his one and only shot at receiving the Republican Party nomination, of not being swift boated or otherwise sabotaged by the powers that be, the movers and shakers of the party.
The Falwells, the Robertsons, the Dobsons.
The Limbaughs, the Hannitys, the Coulters.
The Bushes, the Cheneys, the Roves.
And all those shadowy operatives who lurk somewhere in the nether region through which they are all bound.
It makes you wonder if maybe McCain as a Prisoner Of War didn’t just possibly give out valuable war time information to the enemy.
Not during
