Posted on 02/10/2008 2:09:16 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
1. McCain Should Be Feared, Writer Says
Presidential hopeful John McCain is being billed as the Republican that liberals can live with, but his credentials as a “bipartisan progressive” are in fact a “lazy, hazy myth,” according to liberal pundit Johann Hari.
“The truth is that McCain is the candidate we should most fear,” writes Hari, a columnist for The Independent in Britain, in an article that appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “Not only is he to the right of Bush on a whole range of subjects, he is also the Republican candidate most likely to dispense with Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.”
Hari writes of McCain: “Rage seems to be at the core of his personality. Describing his own childhood, McCain has written: ‘At the smallest provocation I would go off into a mad frenzy, and then suddenly crash to the floor unconscious. When I got angry I held my breath until I blacked out.’”
McCain has distinguished himself as an uber-hawk on foreign policy, according to Hari, who is on the editorial board of The Liberal magazine.
“To give a brief smorgasbord of his views: At a recent rally, he sang 'bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb-bomb Iran,' to the tune of the Beach Boys' ‘Barbara Ann.’ He says North Korea should be threatened with ‘extinction.’
“McCain has mostly opposed using U.S. power for humanitarian goals, jeering at proposals to intervene in Rwanda or Bosnia . . .
“So why do so many nice liberals have a weak spot for McCain? Well, to his credit, he doesn't hate immigrants: He proposed a program to legalize the 12 million undocumented workers in the U.S. He sincerely opposes torture, as a survivor of it himself. He has apologized for denying global warming and now advocates a cap on greenhouse gas emissions but only if China and India can also be locked into the system.”
Hari concludes: “These sprinklings of sanity — onto a very extreme program — are enough for a superficial, glib press to present McCain as ‘bipartisan’ and ‘centrist.’”
2. McCain-Romney Rancor Dates Back to Olympics
The acrimony that developed between John McCain and Mitt Romney cannot be blamed simply on the heated primary campaign for the GOP presidential nomination — the two Republicans were at odds years ago over the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Romney took over operation of the then financially strapped Olympics in Salt Lake City in February 1999, and set out to enlist new corporate sponsors and fix a large budget shortfall.
Then in September 2000, McCain spoke on the Senate floor against what he called the “staggering” cost the federal government faced in helping stage the Games.
“The American taxpayer is being shaken down to the tune of nearly a billion and a half dollars,” McCain declared.
He vowed to “do everything in my power” to delay or kill “this pork-barrel spending,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Romney responded by arguing that taxpayers would need to provide only $250 million, and said he was “quite confident” the Games would receive the funding they needed.
In early 2001, McCain sought to shift $30 million from the Treasury Department, earmarked for law enforcement personnel at the Olympics, to the Pentagon, but the measure was defeated.
Romney, in his 2004 book “Turnaround,” wrote that McCain and others in the Senate were threatening to revoke the tax deductibility of corporate sponsorship, which would “nail the coffin of the Salt Lake Olympics and future Games.”
The clash over Olympics spending, “which dragged on for two years, helps explain some of the acrimony that now characterizes the race between the two front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination,” the Times observed.
In the end, the federal tab — not including construction or improvement of highways, transit systems, and other infrastructure — totaled about $400 million, and the Games were a financial success.
3. Obama Wants Plane Conversations Off the Record
Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has touched off a dispute with the press by insisting that conversations he has with reporters on his campaign plane are off the record.
The issue arose during a Feb. 2 flight when Obama entered the press section of his plane and began speaking with several reporters, including Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times.
“When Obama noticed that the red lights of the journalists’ recorders were on, including Zeleny’s, he said that the conversation was off the record,” politico.com reported.
Zeleny protested that he couldn’t take the conversation off the record. Obama answered a few more questions and returned to the front of the plane.
“In my view, whenever he comes back on the plane to talk to reporters, he is on the record,” Zeleny told politico.com.
“We’re not on the plane, in my view, to have private talks with presidential candidates. We’re here to report what they are saying and give our readers a better idea of their campaigns and their candidacies.”
But Jen Psaki, the Obama campaign’s traveling press secretary, responded: “There has never been a press corps in the history of our nation that got as many interviews as they wanted.”
Obama’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton has also said at times that a conversation at the back of her plane is off the record, although more recently her campaign said those talks would now be on the record.
PING!
The rest of the world is just noticing McCain has a crazy side?
Where they been?
You know when ever I want advice on who I should vote for, I always look for some pompous Euro-trash columnist to tell me what to think. -
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/s-but did it really even need the /s tag?
Romney responded by arguing that taxpayers would need to provide only $250 million, and said he was “quite confident” the Games would receive the funding they needed.
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hmm so that’s why he was able to “turn around” the Olympics. he got us to help.
McCain is right on a few things, wrong on most.
Obama and Clinton are Marxists, none in the Senate are to their left.
There are differences in McCain and the Obama/Hillary
When I’m wondering who to listen to as it applies to which candidates are the best, I always look for someone who inserts uber in front of their nouns while describing them.
“To give a brief smorgasbord of his views: At a recent rally, he sang 'bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb-bomb Iran,' to the tune of the Beach Boys' ‘Barbara Ann.’ He says North Korea should be threatened with ‘extinction.’
Sounds good.
I am so tired of truely stupid things like this. Those who oppose amnesty for illegal aliens do not hate immigrants. This is the big lie theory in practice. Say something long enough and people will believe it is true.
susie
Having said that, I think the point he makes is one that conservatives need to worry about as much as liberals. We don't want a madman in charge any more than they do, and in this case there really is some truth in it.
Hari writes of McCain: “Rage seems to be at the core of his personality. Describing his own childhood, McCain has written: ‘At the smallest provocation I would go off into a mad frenzy, and then suddenly crash to the floor unconscious. When I got angry I held my breath until I blacked out.’”
As many freepers have said for some time, without any help from the left, we do not want McCain's fingers on the nuclear football. It was bad enough when clinton would go to parties and lose the guy holding it, one time leaving him to make his way across DC on foot with the football cradled in his arms.
the media turn on McCain now begins ... how will he deal with it?
I think deportation of millions of people, is the worst thing for any conservative or libertarian to propose. You’ll end up with an enormous police state. So while we need to build a fence to prevent future illegals from coming in, we have to figure out a non-coercive solution for the millions that have already managed to enter.
McCain is the liberal that liberals can live with. *grin*
“McCain is right on a few things, wrong on most.”
Correction. He is wrong on a few things, right on most. He is right on:
1) Right to Life
2) Government spending
3) National Defense
4) Judicial Nominations
Those three broad issues overshadow the rest and make it easy to support him. When Bush was nominated, he had no experience in national security, his judicial appointments were not all that encouraging (he had put Gonzalez on the Texas Supreme Court), he was squishy on abortion and not known as a fiscal conservative.
McCain’s record an all these issues is much better than Bush’s. He has voted for every GOP judicial nomination in the last 2 decade including Bork, Thomas, Alito and Roberts.His record on right to life is virtually spotless. And he has opposed many pork barrel spending escapades, including the prescription drug benefit and the Highway bill (both of which cost a combined $1.5 Trillion) which Bush by the way supported. True, he has been wrong on issues such as CFR (which Bush signed) and Immigration (which Bush pushed as hard as he did).
His main apostasy was his opposition to the measly temporary Bush tax cut of 4.6%, which he opposed because it lacked ANY spending restraints. Fair enough. He now wants to make it permanent. I give him a pass on this because of his past votes for the massive Reagan tax cuts in 1981 and 1986 (the latter being a rate cut of 22%) and for his votes AGAINST the BUSH TAX INCREASE of 1990 and the Clinton tax increase of 1993.
Limbaugh et al were willing to give George W. Bush the benefit of the doubt in 2000 in spite of his father’s big “Read my Lips “ tax hike, and the big property tax hike he pushed through the Texas legislature as Governor. Yet, he will not extend the same benefit of the doubt to McCain.
great...we’re going to interview his kindergarten teacher?
It will be tough for the media to paint him as a nasty guy if Hillary and other democrats are on record stating that he is a friend and works well with them.
It also means that Hillary will lose the nomination.
My opinion that McCain is unstable is well documented here....heck where ever I go.
But I want to know where and when McCain actually admitted let alone wrote this.
don’t forget contract with america.
I predict a big surprise. He is being “educated” on taxes and will propose a complete overhaul of the tax code.
and for his votes AGAINST the BUSH TAX INCREASE of 1990
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see? that just proves he is not loyal to the GOP! traitor! /sarc
Making them unable to earn money to buy food might work and then we could leave a trail of chorizo to the border.
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.-
Theodore Roosevelt
Good Post
John McCain is a formidable candidate and I will support him in November. He just needs to choose a really good conservative running mate.
Soon all the world will know McCain isn’t the sort we want in charge. Watch and soon even his most ardent followers will urge him to step down.
Don’t give them welfare but they probably won’t leave because the economic opportunity over here even without welfare is much much better than what they can get in mexico. This will be a matter of time and attrition but first you have to build the border.
Read the article more carefully. The thesis of the article is anti-McCain or that he’s “crazy” wholly in terms of those aspects of his views that are actually conservative.
and he will get virginia and maryland
If I actually thought this was true, I might like McCain better.
the real liberals...they know that mccain is very conservative. It really bothers them because people like Rush and Ann Coulter positioned him so that he looks like a moderate or almost a democrat
LOL McCain hates “torture” once we capture someone. But, if there is a “take no prisoners” policy.... They make it sound like the “authoroties” better have plenty of virgins ready to go in the Islamofascist afterworld....
his credentials as a “bipartisan progressive”
“
The liberals call themselves “progressives”
Is McCain reaching across the aisle from our side...
Or reaching across the aisle to us from their side...?????
McCain scares me.
Obama and Hillary scare me more.
After church this morning I was talking to a conservative Republican woman. She asked another woman, a Democrat, what she thought of McCain and the other woman said "he'd just be another four years of Bush." Turns out her candidate had been Edwards.
he doesn’t hate immigrants”
Yes, he does...
McCain is anti-immigration and pro-illegal aliens
He was correct to silence Wisconsin Right to Life?
3) National Defense
Throwing open our borders will sure make this country safer, won't it?
4) Judicial Nominations
He was correct to prevent a rule change that would have required the Senate to actually carry out its duty?
Before he was 2 years old, Arizona Sen. John McCain writes in his new family memoir, he developed "an outsized temper" that caused him to "go off in a mad frenzy and then, suddenly, crash to the floor unconscious." The doctor told his parents the problem was self-induced: "When I got angry I held my breath until I blacked out."
WoW...Thank you.
“He was correct to silence Wisconsin Right to Life?”
This is over Campaign Finance Reform. You equate that with votes in favor of Bork, Thomas, Alito and Roberts; opposition to Partial Birth Abortion; Votes against Federal Funding of Abortion; Votes in favor of the Mexico City policy; votes against abortion on military facilities, and on and on. Talk about straining out the gnat and swallowing the camel.
“Throwing open our borders will sure make this country safer, won’t it?”
McCain says he is going to secure the borders first. You may choose to disbelieve him, but remember, Bush supported the same bill. If Bush could run for reelection, would you throw him under the bus on this issue?
“He was correct to prevent a rule change that would have required the Senate to actually carry out its duty?”
That rule change, the nuclear option, would have been a good thing. However, the only thing worse than not changing th rule was to ATTEMPT to change the rule and FAIL. To change the rule, you needed 50 votes plus Cheney. That meant you would have to rely on at least one of the following: Snowe, Collins, Lincoln Chafee, Arlen Specter and John Warner, and Mike Dewine. Every one of them was squishy on the nuclear option and if it had failed, it would have meant that the Dems could have filibustered Roberts and Alito (not to mention the excellent Appeals Court Judges Janice Rogers Brown, Bill Pryor and Priscilla Owen, who were confirmed under the compromise.) Yet this is enough to make you cut McCain loose as far as reliability on judicial nominees is concerned. If Hillary or Obama is elected, we will need a lot more than a filibuster to block the kinds of judges they will appoint.
Then in September 2000, McCain spoke on the Senate floor against what he called the “staggering” cost the federal government faced in helping stage the Games.
“The American taxpayer is being shaken down to the tune of nearly a billion and a half dollars,” McCain declared.
He vowed to “do everything in my power” to delay or kill “this pork-barrel spending,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Romney responded by arguing that taxpayers would need to provide only $250 million, and said he was “quite confident” the Games would receive the funding they needed.
In early 2001, McCain sought to shift $30 million from the Treasury Department, earmarked for law enforcement personnel at the Olympics, to the Pentagon, but the measure was defeated.
Romney, in his 2004 book “Turnaround,” wrote that McCain and others in the Senate were threatening to revoke the tax deductibility of corporate sponsorship, which would “nail the coffin of the Salt Lake Olympics and future Games.”
The clash over Olympics spending, “which dragged on for two years, helps explain some of the acrimony that now characterizes the race between the two front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination,” the Times observed.
In the end, the federal tab — not including construction or improvement of highways, transit systems, and other infrastructure — totaled about $400 million, and the Games were a financial success.
______________________________________________
McCain was right about this
How can something be a “financial success” if it costs the American taxpaqyers $400 Million ????
both. he wants to listen to conservatives
“We have had a few disagreements, and none of us will pretend that we won’t continue to have a few. But even in disagreement, especially in disagreement, I will seek the counsel of my fellow conservatives. If I am convinced my judgment is in error, I will correct it. And if I stand by my position, even after benefit of your counsel, I hope you will not lose sight of the far more numerous occasions when we are in complete accord.”
the nuclear option would NOT be a good thing. imagine if the democrats are in the WH. We wouldn’t be able to filibuster THEIR radical judicial appointments because we set a precedent. mcCain maintained the stability of the senate and we got Alito and other judges in over a democrat filibuster.
I think on balance it would have been a good thing because it is consistent with the Constitution, which does not require a 60 vote supermajority to confirm judges. That said, you are correct that it has the downside that it eliminates the filibuster option for the GOP.
In any case, to jettison McCain over this is crazy. IMHO
I've voted nothing but republican since I've been able to vote, including for McCain, but not this time. Not again. If he wins, then I hope for the sake of the country and for the reputation of the republican party that I'm wrong. But I won't be wrong twice with my ballot by voting for him again.
I'd guess the folks in Kansas weren't too happy that McCain is planning to send the Gitmo detainees to Ft. Leavenworth the first day he becomes president.
This summer, Ft. Leavenworth had 450 prisoners. It can hold 500.
Gitmo has over 400 prisoners.
McCain has admitted he doesn't understand the economy. Does McCain understand elementary arithmetic?
Why wouldn't the Democrats set the precedent themselves?
They've been willing to do almost everything else to get their way.
(1) When have the Republicans ever even tried to filibuster a judicial nominee? (2) In the unlikely event that Republicans do mount a filibuster, what makes you think the Democrats won't change the rules to prevent it?
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