Best Budz
Posted on 04/18/2005 3:03:56 PM PDT by swilhelm73
Senator John McCain appeared on Hardball within the last hour to inform Chris Matthews and the MS-NBC audience that he would refuse to vote for the so-called "nuclear option", the rule change that would disallow filibusters on executive nominations for the federal bench. He stated that he would vote with the Democrats to uphold the notion that a legislative minority has the right to dictate to the executive branch who their nominees should be:
MATTHEWS: But bottom line, would you vote for what’s called the “nuclear option,” to get rid of the filibuster rule on judgeships? MCCAIN: No I will not.
MATTHEWS: You will stick with the party?
MCCAIN: No, I will vote against the nuclear option.
MATTHEWS: You will vote—
MCCAIN: Against the nuclear option.
MATTHEWS: Oh, you will?
MCCAIN: Yes.
I initially heard this exchange on the Hugh Hewitt show, and I almost choked when Hugh referred to McCain as a "great American," in Hugh's classy way of framing the debate. I cannot support that notion. McCain served his country admirably in Viet Nam, but his career as a politician contains nothing but a series of sell-outs and the worst kind of self-promotion.
This self-described "maverick" started his Senate career by peddling his influence to Charles Keating, who fleeced the FSLIC for billions of dollars. McCain claimed to be the least tarnished of the Keating 5 and the least culpable, but in the meantime his family had invested heavily in Keating's businesses and traveling on Keating junkets to the Bahamas and other fancy vacations.
After having sold Arizonans out to a crook, McCain took on the appearance of a reformer by climbing aboard the campaign-finance reform bandwagon. He made headlines and became a media darling by claiming that money unduly influenced politics, after claiming that the investments and gifts of Keating had nothing to do with his actions in defending Keating's businesses. This work culminated in the BCRA, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act, perhaps the single most successful attack on free political speech in a century. It cemented his persona as a reformer.
However, a closer look earlier this year shows that to be a clumsy facade. His Reform Institute channels big money from leftists like George Soros to keep his campaign staff employed while decrying the checkbook politics that funds his vanity program. McCain, in essence, has created the same kind of mechanism he supposedly decries by building a shelter for unaccountable donations that exists to glorify John McCain and keep him in the public eye. He sold out the Constitution to make himself look good on the news shows and to cover the stink from his first term.
Now he's sold out the Republicans and the majority of the country that elected a GOP president and extended the GOP majority in the Senate. McCain offers as an excuse the threats of the Democrats who insist on governing from the minority:
Second of all, we ought to be able to work it out. Third of all I don’t want to shut down the Senate. We’re in a war. We’re in a war. Shouldn’t we be doing the people’s business? Filling empty bench seats is the people's business. Where did McCain get the idea that the people don't care who gets nominated for federal appellate seats? And if McCain doesn't want to shut down the Senate, then he should tell Harry Reid to stop his extortion racket and tell his Democrats to start showing up for committee assignments, starting with the Judiciary Committee. Giving in to extortion isn't courageous or great; it's political cowardice, and unfortunately, it's all too typical of the so-called "maverick".
McCain was a brave man in Viet Nam. He became a craven politician a long time ago, however, and almost everything he's done since shows that he hasn't changed a bit. If I still lived in Arizona, I'd be looking for ways to recall him from office immediately. It's time for the GOP to quit kissing McCain's ass and apply another extremity to it with noticeable force -- and to strip him of his committee assignments as soon as possible. Let him switch parties if he likes. He's useless and a disgrace as a Republican.
Addendum: Let's return to this notion of McCain's that the filibuster should be preserved in case liberals grab a majority in the Senate and win the White House some time in the future. He warns that a bunch of liberal judges would get confirmed if that happens. Well, pardon my sense of equity, but in those circumstances they should. Clearly that would reflect the will and disposition of the electorate, and judicial nominations being one of the reasons for electing both branches of the government, such an outcome would be entirely appropriate. Filibusters that foist the will of the minority onto the majority, especially for processes that clearly have a Constitutional threshold for majority rule, make little sense regardless of who holds power.
Besides, by caving in, what difference does it make? McCain has just enabled the Democrats to stall until Bush nominates the liberal judges the minority desires and the electorate rejected. It now makes absolutely no difference what the American voter wants, thanks to the sellout from Arizona.
This is, if any be needed, one more example that McCain is not a Republican, and that he does not understand the logic of the American system of government. When someone is wrong, or stupid, or both, it is useful if they are at least consistent so you know what to expect. McCain misses the boat on all three points.
In short, McCain is helping Reid in his ambition to cripple the Senate. It makes no difference whether that is his intention. That IS his result.
Click below for a humorous, and accurate, description of Reid and his tactics.
Congressman Billybob
Latest column, "A Triple Black Dog Double Dare to Infinity."
This shouldn't surprise anyone here. Maybe someone will return Quieg's can of strawberries. The mcKANE MUTINY lives on.
He wasn't a great hero in VN. The 3rd plane he crashed was over NVN.
He was a POW, who was not allowed by his CO there, to take the early out of the HH which was offered to him by his NVN jailers.
He is good for s***!
Let him go to the dimz party. He is LESS than useless to us.
How will McCrazy garner media attention and adulation as a "Maverick" GOP Senator when he is again an unimportant member of an unimportant GOP minority? As a minority Senator his "valued" opinion will be worth a bucket of warm spit.
Breaking with the Gop base will only cause us losses at the midterm elections, Unless we are able to field Primary candidates to defeat the defecting RINO's.
Are you telling us that Hewitt used the "a great American" shtick like Hannity does for his good friends like Rangel?
Pity.
FMCDH(BITS)
"Let's return to this notion of McCain's that the filibuster should be preserved in case liberals grab a majority in the Senate and win the White House some time in the future."
My God, it's just amazing.
They STILL don't get it, these Republicans.
They REALLY BELIEVE that if they refrain from doing something now, that the Democrats will play nice and play fair and not do it either when they get power.
NEWFLASH: if the Democrats have 50 seats in the Senate and a Democratic Vice President, THEY will assert the Nuclear Option to install their judges.
"WHAT?" I hear you lamebrained Republicans cry! "They CAN'T! They just said it was WRONG."
Jesus. How many times do these guys have to do the rope-a-dope before people get it?
The Democrats will do WHATEVER IT TAKES to enact their agenda. They stick together, and if enacting their agenda means complete and raving hypocrisy, taking the diametrically opposed position to what they said last week, they will do it in a heartbeat.
If the Dems get 50 seats in the Senate and the White House, they will go nuclear and push through every one of their judicial nominees.
Republicans refraining from doing it is not going to accomplish ANYTHING. Because Democrats do not play fair, and will not ever play fair, no matter WHAT Republicans do.
Cannot Republicans get it through their thick, well-meaning skulls that the Democrats do not pattern their behavior off of Republicans, and are simply not going to play by ANY rules Republicans set when the Democrats get power back? They will set their own rules, and they do not give a damn whether those rules are fair or not. They also don't care if you think they're philandering, lying, hypocritical snakes or even Klansmen. They don't care. They have power, and they will unabashedly use all of their power to command YOU to do what THEY think you should do. That is what power is. Their power is not diminished, at all, by the fact that they are tawdry snakes.
So, here we have dopey Opus McCain and haystack Republicans like him who think "Gosh, if WE use the nuclear option, THEY will...but if we DON'T, they won't either."
What a bunch of drooling rubes.
Idiot, McCain, listen up: they will do whatever they can do when they get power, and what YOU do now will have no bearing, at all, on what they do. To Republicans, 55 votes in the Senate and majorities of the House and Judiciary are not power. To the Democrats, 50 votes in the Senate is power, and they will go nuclear the first moment they have to. Nothing Republicans can do, or not do, will have any effect on future Democratic behavior at all.
It's war, and they will rip Republicans' guts out the first chance they get, no matter how long Republicans play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules.
This is just painfully obvious.
Wake up.
Jeez.
McCain cannot be trusted. Period.
He just got re-elected in '04... We're stuck with him in the Senate until 2010.
Recall him!
"We're stuck with him in the Senate until 2010"
My first impulse is to express frustration at Arizona, but I CAN'T because I live in New Jersey and we have Corzine and Louse-enberg.
IMHO, McCain sold out while a resident of the Hilton (Hanoi).
Just let us know when he doesn't sell out.
It ain't just Arizona with vermin representing them, I have Bill Nelson here in Fla. and you could have Kerry and Kennedy like Mass.
We all get what we deserve and Arizona has made it claer that they think America deserves this sanctimonious camera hog that is about as able as any fry man or woman at McDonalds.
I am beginning to suspect that McCain is getting under the table money from Soros, even more than mentioned here, just as Scott Ritter, CNN, and CBS, got money and favors from Saddam to take his side. There is also rumor that McCain was not the staunch patriot as a POW that most of his comrades were.
He is also still bitter about the anal exam he got in the 2000 campaign and seems determined to stick his finger the eye of Republicans as often as he can while still claiming loyalty to them.
Needless to say, I am not a McCain admirer.
It's past time he gave up his Senate seat as well.
I hear you in your appeals for letters.
But I've a got a question about all of this "Be nice to your politicians" business.
Obviously we should, as a moral matter, be nice to everybody.
But I wonder about the political calculation that says that if you speak harshly to a politician, that this empowers him to ignore you.
It doesn't.
If millions of people speak harshly to a politician, and he ignores them (on the grounds that he is only responsible to those who maintain a "civil" tone with him), he will be unemployed the next election.
Politicians are hired employees. You SHOULD be nice to your employees, but if someone you hire starts acting like a jackass, there is no particular reason not to express your anger at him.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.