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“McCain - Served his country” ~ Johnny Z

Let us count the ways:

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January 11, 2008, 0:00 p.m.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjUzOGY0ODA1YzBmNjFhOWE5NWU0OTY5NTZiOGNhOGQ=

The Real McCain Record
Obstacles in the way of conservative support.

By Mark R. Levin

There’s a reason some of John McCain’s conservative supporters avoid discussing his record. They want to talk about his personal story, his position on the surge, his supposed electability. But whenever the rest of his career comes up, the knee-jerk reply is to characterize the inquiries as attacks.

The McCain domestic record is a disaster. To say he fought spending, most particularly earmarks, is to nibble around the edges and miss the heart of the matter. For starters, consider:

[] McCain-Feingold the most brazen frontal assault on political speech since Buckley v. Valeo.

[] McCain-Kennedy the most far-reaching amnesty program in American history.

[] McCain-Lieberman the most onerous and intrusive attack on American industry through reporting, regulating, and taxing authority of greenhouse gases in American history.

[] McCain-Kennedy-Edwards the biggest boon to the trial bar since the tobacco settlement, under the rubric of a patients’ bill of rights.

[] McCain-Reimportantion of Drugs a significant blow to pharmaceutical research and development, not to mention consumer safety (hey Rudy, pay attention, see link).

And McCain’s stated opposition to the Bush 2001 and 2003 tax cuts was largely based on socialist, class-warfare rhetoric tax cuts for the rich, not for the middle class. The public record is full of these statements. Today, he recalls only his insistence on accompanying spending cuts.

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, McCain was consistently hostile to American enterprise, from media and pharmaceutical companies to technology and energy companies.

McCain also led the Gang of 14, which prevented the Republican leadership in the Senate from mounting a rule change that would have ended the systematic use (actual and threatened) of the filibuster to prevent majority approval of judicial nominees.

And then there’s the McCain defense record.

His supporters point to essentially one policy strength, McCain’s early support for a surge and counterinsurgency. It has now evolved into McCain taking credit for forcing the president to adopt General David Petreaus’s strategy. Where’s the evidence to support such a claim?

Moreover, Iraq is an important battle in our war against the Islamo-fascist threat. But the war is a global war, and it most certainly includes the continental United States, which, after all, was struck on 9/11. How does McCain fare in that regard?

[] McCain-ACLU the unprecedented granting of due-process rights to unlawful enemy combatants (terrorists).

[] McCain has repeatedly called for the immediate closing of Guantanamo Bay and the introduction of al-Qaeda terrorists into our own prisons despite the legal rights they would immediately gain and the burdens of managing such a dangerous population.

[] While McCain proudly and repeatedly points to his battles with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who had to rebuild the U.S. military and fight a complex war, where was McCain in the lead-up to the war when the military was being dangerously downsized by the Clinton administration and McCain’s friend, former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen? Where was McCain when the CIA was in desperate need of attention? Also, McCain was apparently in the dark about al-Qaeda like most of Washington, despite a decade of warnings.

My fingers are crossed that at the next debate, either Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney will find a way to address McCain’s record. (Mike Huckabee won’t, as he is apparently in the tank for him.)

Mark R. Levin served as chief of staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese in the Reagan administration, and he is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host.

McCain’s Massive Energy Consumption Tax
Townhall Election Coverage ^ | 1-13-2008 | Hugh Hewitt
Posted on 01/14/2008 3:32:33 AM EST by unspun
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1953292/posts

The McCain-Lieberman proposed tax on energy consumption was the subject of a column by Roy Cordato in the NationalReview.com yesterday:

The proposed bill, co-sponsored with Joe Lieberman, mandates an energy-rationing scheme that all economists acknowledge is equivalent to a broad-based energy tax which is similar to Bill Clinton’s 1993 Btu tax proposal. Energy would be taxed through the back door by placing a cap on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that energy-producing companies can emit. It puts a legal limit on the amount of energy that can be drawn from conventional sources such as oil, coal, and natural gas.

McCain’s energy tax would kick in whenever an energy-producing company wants to expand its output above the cap. If, for example, a utility company that is bumping up against its emissions cap wants to increase its production of electricity generated from coal, oil, or natural gas, it will have to buy permission to do so by purchasing unused permits from other companies. The same would be true of an oil refiner that wants to increase its output of gasoline or home heating oil, possibly to meet new consumer demand. The purchase price of the permits is a tax, and will have the same effects as a tax on the market; it would raise the price of the energy source, i.e. coal, oil, etc., and therefore, it would likewise raise the costs of all production that relies on those sources, as well as the price of all goods and services that those production processes generate.

The EPA has estimated what the McCain energy tax would mean to consumers. Since the bill’s provisions are phased in, the full cost of the tax would not be felt for a number of years. But in a letter to Senator McCain dated July 2007, the EPA estimated that the tax will be about $.26 cents in current dollars per gallon of gasoline by 2030 and $.68 cents per gallon by 2050. For electricity, the EPA estimates that the McCain energy tax would increase individual’s electric bills by 22 percent in 2030 and 25 percent in 2050.

Here’s how one environmental group greeted the 2007 version of McCain-Lieberman’s global warming bill:

Environmental Defense today enthusiastically welcomed the introduction of a strengthened Lieberman-McCain Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act with an important new co-sponsor.

“Joe Lieberman and John McCain have been working on global warming for a long time and this year’s bill has been significantly strengthened. It’s aggressive in the short term and responsible over the long term. Lieberman and McCain are following the science and they deserve a lot of credit for it,” said Environmental Defense President Fred Krupp.

The legislation is co-sponsored by Senators Olympia Snowe and Barack Obama, who supported the bill in the 109th Congress, and Senator Blanche Lincoln, who is a new co-sponsor. “The addition of Blanche Lincoln demonstrates the incredible momentum behind this issue. Moderates like Lincoln understand how important this is not only for the environment, but for America’s energy security, rural economy, and global economic competitiveness.”

When first introduced in 2003, the Marshall Institute opined about the bill:

The McCain-Lieberman proposal demonstrates that in politics, perception is reality and facts are negotiable.

Having jumped over facts that don’t support their assumptions, McCain and Lieberman combine two flawed policies—the Clinton BTU tax and the Kyoto Protocol—to produce an equally flawed legislative proposal.

Since emissions come from energy use, imposing a cap on emissions means imposing a cap on energy use. Cutting through all of the rhetoric, this is imposed scarcity—in World War II it was called rationing—and the result will be an increase in the cost of energy. A government-mandated increase in the cost of energy is a tax.

The summer collapse of Senator McCain’s campaign allowed it to escape the sort of scrutiny that Giuliani and Romney and to a lesser extent Thompson endured. (Mike Huckabee has also been given a pass until very recently.)

Now as voters in Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina consider their votes, they need to recall not just McCain’s votes against the Bush tax cuts, the McCain-Kennedy immigration “reform” with its Z Visas, the Gang of 14 which has left a long line of vacancies on crucial circuit courts of appeals and of course the already partially nullified McCain-Feingold restraints on free speech, they must also keep in mind that the Arizona maverick is teamed up with Barack Obama among others to cripple the economy in the name of global warming.

George Will - Sunday 01/13/2008:
“...Tuesday’s Republican primary is in one of the nation’s worst-governed states. Under a Democratic governor, Michigan has been taxed into a one-state recession. Native son Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate who best understands how wealth is created, might revive his campaign by asking: Who do you want to be president in 2010 when the Bush tax cuts, which McCain opposed, expire? Can automakers endure more regulations such as the fuel efficiency mandates that climate-fixers such as McCain favor? Do you want a president (Mike Huckabee, proponent of a national sales tax of at least 30 percent) pledged to radically increase the proportion of federal taxation paid by the middle class? Republicans should try to choose the next president. They cannot avoid choosing how their party will define itself, even if by a loss beneath a worthy banner. ~ George Will http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1952937/posts