Posted on 06/12/2005 11:51:11 AM PDT by Spiff
By Dennis Durband, Editor
June 11, 2005
SCOTTSDALE -- No, Donald Trump, U.S. Senator John McCain has not been fired. On Saturday, the Arizona Republican Assembly (ARA) voted unanimously during its annual state convention to censure Arizona’s senior senator.
McCain has seriously alienated his conservative base in the 21st century. However, he has greatly enamored himself with liberals and he easily won re-election in November with his new liberal support base. The conservatives who make up the ARA membership have had enough of what they consider a betrayal by McCain and they took advantage of their annual resolution ritual to take action against the liberal metamorphosis of the presidential hopeful.
The censure measure will be sent to Matt Salmon, chairman of the Arizona GOP -- with hopes of a state party censure as well -- to all Republican county and legislative district chairmen and will be issued as a press release to the media. No one spoke in support of McCain during discussion of the resolution.
ARA member Bruce Barton, of Safford, authored the resolution. The reasons behind the censure focus specifically on McCain’s amnesty bill for illegal aliens, for deserting the ranks of the Republican Party by undermining Senate President Bill Frist’s recent attempt to change a filibuster cloture rule and for ignoring constitutional concerns with his campaign finance reform law.
Public opinion on the ARA censure ran favorably all week long. A non-scientific GOPUSA/Arizona poll drawing 213 responses resulted in 93.4 percent approval of the censure.
Though a motion for censure Saturday drew unanimous approval, the ARA’s senior member, Louis Stradling, of Mesa, offered up an amendment that would have added stronger language to the document. Stradling suggested an amendment to the resolution that would have charged McCain with “malfeasance.” That move failed when Barton said he agrees with the spirit of Stradling’s suggestion, but he felt the word “malfeasance” might have added a legal sticking point that ARA would be better off avoiding. After the proposed amendment failed, ARA delegates enthusiastically and without dissent approved the resolution to censure McCain.
The resolution reads as follows:
WHEREAS, Senator John McCain is presently co-sponsoring, together with his Democrat soul-mate, Senator Teddy Kennedy, a Bill to Reform the Immigration Policy of the United States promoting amnesty for illegal aliens and for their U.S. employers, thus ignoring the opinions of his constituents expressed in numerous polls and personal pleas; and
WHEREAS, Senator McCain deserted the ranks of the Republican Party and the Leadership of the U.S. Senate on the issue of limiting the filibuster of judicial nominations, some of which have been on-hold for several years, thus stalling the President’s agenda for judicial reform; and
WHEREAS, Senator McCain led the Democrat Party in “reforming” campaign finance, providing for a clear usurpation of 1st Amendment free speech rights during the last 60 days of an election campaign, and leading to an orgy of spending in the 2004 elections;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Arizona Republican Assembly (ARA) officially and publicly censures Senator John McCain for dereliction of his duties and responsibilities as a representative of the citizens of Arizona; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the ARA strongly urges State Republican Party Chairman, Matt Salmon, the Arizona State Republican Party and its County and Legislative District affiliates to officially and publicly express their displeasure with Senator McCain by means of a public censure; and
BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that copies of this Resolution be sent to the Chairman of the State Republican Party, to all Republican County and Legislative District Chairman and be issued as a Press Release to the media.
The likelihood of persuading Arizona GOP to get on board with the censure is practically nil. The state party typically takes a neutral approach to wayward Republican office holders.
Saturday's censure was just the latest incident of protest against McCain in the past four years. Last year, several people demonstrated peacefully outside McCain's Tempe office over his refusal to support the proposed federal marriage amendment. In 2001, two McCain recall movements arose against the senator. The leaders of those two organizations combined their efforts into one joint recall and then permanently suspended operations upon the events of Sept, 11, 2001. Also that year, opponents of McCain gathered for public opposition rallies in Scottsdale and Tempe.
McCain is expected to seek the GOP presidential nomination again in 2008.
I believe you're memory is right. Some friends I know in AZ claim he bought the election between his own money, as well as votes and donations from Democrats there. I don't personally know what happened or who funded him.
All I can say is it would be almost impossible for someone to win in CO, without party support. The AZ party will remain neutral, just like the party would here.
After spending nearly 30 years in the Phoenix area, on and off, McCain has ALWAYS been a Democrat. BUT, when he was originally elected in Arizona, it still had enough of a hard fought independent contingent to the voter base that McCain HAD to run as a Republican. He never would have gotten into office back then.
Unfortunately, now he can enjoy his "leadership" position of a Democrat mole and Committee Chairman while stabbing Republicans in the back and working with his DEMONrat Allies.
ANTI-DNC Web Portal at ---> http://www.noDNC.com
He will get his, encourage him to run for president in the primaries, and whip his ass so bad that he limps away like the sorry dog that he is.. no offense to dogs.. :)
McCain needs to retire. I've never yet even considered voting for him. He's done MINUS ZERO for Arizona. He's just wasting or time and our money, in D.C.
ARA member Bruce Barton, of Safford, authored the resolution. The reasons behind the censure focus specifically on McCain’s amnesty bill for illegal aliens, for deserting the ranks of the Republican Party by undermining Senate President Bill Frist’s recent attempt to change a filibuster cloture rule and for ignoring constitutional concerns with his campaign finance reform law.
Public opinion on the ARA censure ran favorably all week long. A non-scientific GOPUSA/Arizona poll drawing 213 responses resulted in 93.4 percent approval of the censure.
I'd rather do a write in for my deceased cat then vote for this lowlife.
I agree that John McCain has ALWAYS been this way.
ALWAYS!
And why Kerry thought he had a shot getting him on board as his VP.
Okay--your post makes sense. I'll take your advice.
I'm chilled--LOL! You are perfectly right---I do see the error of my ways.
How about "Traitor" to his party? The word "traitor" may still fit even if it's not "traitor to his country". I'm a conservative Republican and I say he was a traitor to me. And, unlike you I wouldn't say "media hound" but "media whore".
Bill
I've heard that too.
This is from an earlier post today.
Is this action treasonous?
"McCain along with Kerry have sold the Vietnam POWs and MIAs down the drain."
"This writing by Sydney H. Schlanberg pretty well states the degree of disgust those of us concerned with Vietnam War POWs have for McCain.
by Sydney H. Schanberg
June 7th, 2005
John McCain has won the press's heart and a sizable chunk of the public's
by championing progressive causes, not least his dogged drive to clean up
campaign financing.
The reporters covering the 2000 presidential primaries virtually swooned
inside his campaign bus, which, you'll remember, was named the Straight
Talk Express. The Arizona senator's message was: The rest of the candidates
are dedicated spinners; I'll tell you the truth. Now the press is gushing
over his leadership in breaking the Senate stalemate on the White House's
nominees for federal judgeships. Journalists love this kind of politician.
He's different, a Republican maverick, a thorn in the side of his own party
and its president, George W. Bush. To sum up, he makes great copy. He also
has made some laudable contributions to better government.
There is one part of his record, however, that the press almost never asks
him about. They never ask why this decorated navy pilot and Vietnam P.O.W.
has spent so much of his time and energy as a senator pushing through
legislation to block the release of information about American P.O.W.'s and
M.I.A.'s who are still not accounted for.
Working hand in hand with the Pentagon and the intelligence community,
McCain has kept hidden critical documents about a body of prisoners who
were alive but secretly held back by Hanoi when the war ended as bargaining
fuel for war reparations. They were never returned. They are now merely
listed as either dead or missing in action. Seven successive presidents,
starting with Richard Nixon, have privately endorsed this cover-up and
blackout on P.O.W. documents¯while claiming to have directed the Pentagon
and the intelligence agencies to declassify everything possible. Sure. And
all your toys are made by Santa's elves.
The reality is that while this shell game was going on, literally thousands
of P.O.W. documents that could have been declassified long ago and provided
to the families of the missing and the public have been legislated into
secrecy. John McCain was a major player in this lockdown.
A couple of examples will give you an idea of McCain's role. In 1991, he
authored what has always been called the "McCain Bill." Simply put, it
created a tight bureaucratic maze from which few P.O.W. documents can
possibly emerge. And in 1996, McCain succeeded in amending¯and gutting¯the
Missing Service Personnel Act, removing all its enforcement teeth. The
original act contained criminal penalties for anyone, such as a government
official, civilian or military, who destroys or covers up or withholds from
P.O.W. families any information about a missing soldier. McCain just erased
this part of the law. He said the penalties would have a chilling effect on
the Pentagon's ability to recruit personnel for its P.O.W.-M.I.A. office.
Why hasn't the press¯and in particular the Washington press corps¯gone
after this story? Part of the reason is that immediately after the Vietnam
War, the press hunkered down. When Washington tried to blame graphic news
stories and TV footage, not its flawed policy, for the U.S. failure in
Vietnam, the press for the most part did not confront its accusers and seek
to set the public record straight. Instead, it went largely silent and
compliant. Much of America was also running away from the black eye that
was Vietnam.
Even when the facts about P.O.W.'s were in plain sight, journalists shied
away. When the war-ending treaty was negotiated in Paris in January 1973,
Hanoi refused to produce¯until after the signing¯its list of the American
P.O.W.'s to be repatriated. U.S. officials were stunned when the list was
handed over. It had 591 names, hundreds fewer than American intelligence
data showed were alive in captivity. The American list for prisoners in
Laos, for instance, had 311 names. Of the 591 returnees on Hanoi's list,
only nine were from Laos. And that was just Laos.
The Laos disparity was reported clearly in the lead of a page one story in
The New York Times in late January 1973. The mainstream press never
followed up. Not to this day. Everyone focused on the obvious story: the
591 who were coming home. John McCain, on crutches from the torture he had
borne, was one of them.
How many Americans remember that in 1992 two defense secretaries who served
the Nixon administration in the Vietnam era, Melvin Laird and James
Schlesinger, testified before a Senate special committee on P.O.W.'s¯on
television, under oath¯that they believed, from strong intelligence data,
that a number of living prisoners in Vietnam and Laos had not been
returned? Schlesinger told the committee: "I can come to no other
conclusion . . . some were left behind." Their testimony has never been
challenged. Schlesinger, before becoming defense secretary, had been the
CIA director.
Incidentally, Senator McCain was a pivotal member of that P.O.W. committee,
which was co-chaired by his friend Senator John Kerry. The committee's
final report, in early 1993, whitewashed the evidence that men were left
behind. In effect, the report reversed the focus of the inquiry from "What
happened to the prisoners left behind in 1973?" to "Are there any prisoners
still alive today in Indochina?"
If you recall none of these events, you are forgiven. The press made little
of them. The Schlesinger-Laird testimony, for instance, was a one-day story
and, in The New York Times, it wasn't even the lead of the article. The
Washington press corps never pursued the story further.
In 1993, a document surfaced from Soviet archives. Its heading said it was
a report delivered late in the war by a senior North Vietnamese general,
Tran Van Quang, to members of Hanoi's Communist Party Central Committee. In
it, Quang said the army was holding 1,205 American prisoners¯614 more than
the 591 who were returned. He said only some of them would be handed over
initially after a peace treaty. The rest, he said, would be secretly held
for leverage until Hanoi received reconstruction reparations for the
heavily bombed country. The Pentagon immediately called it a forgery, a
plant, but offered slim evidence. The Russian archivists said flatly that
it was an authentic document.
As far as we know, Hanoi never received any reparations money. The U.S.
said its firm policy was never to ransom prisoners; this claim may or may
not be true. No serious effort has been made by Washington or the press to
investigate the mystery of the Quang document.
A ransom demand was made to the U.S. in the early days of the Reagan
administration, according to sworn testimony to the P.O.W. committee from
Reagan's national security adviser, Richard Allen. He later recanted,
saying his memory had played tricks on him. Both the committee and the
press docilely accepted his recantation and let the story die there.
Despite all the denials and suppression of key files by McCain and others,
ample evidence exists in the National Archives that men were held back by
Hanoi. The press can easily use the National Archives if it chooses.
Readers interested in more information can turn to a P.O.W. story I did for
the Voice last year about John Kerry's role. That piece ("When John Kerry's
Courage Went M.I.A.," February 24, 2004) has links to several other pieces
I've done over the years. And if you do a Google search for "Sydney
Schanberg, John McCain, P.O.W.'s," you'll find a longer, more detailed
story I wrote in 2000 about the specific legislation McCain has brokered to
keep documents hidden and about his rationale for these laws. He says,
u the American P.O.W.'s to be repatnconvincingly, that it's better for the
military and the nation if these documents are closely held. He also says
that while there was "evidence" of a number of prisoners not returned,
there is still no "proof."
A television movie about McCain's five and a half years as a P.O.W. debuted
over the Memorial Day weekend on A&E. It's called Faith of My Fathers,
based on his 1999 memoir of the same name. It could become part of his
campaign ammunition should he seek the presidency again in 2008.
For a man who is so candid about so many other issues, one would hope he
will help us better understand his senatorial record on P.O.W.'s. And
perhaps the Washington press corps will ask him about it.
This response was from an earlier post today (What's wrong with McCain.
Is this action treasonous?
35 posted on 06/12/2005 11:20:14 AM PDT by DJ Taylor (Once again our country is at war, and once again the Democrats have sided with our enemy.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]"
All are poor choices. Guliani is pro-abortion. Romney is squishy on abortion and gay marriage. McCain sucks.
Agreed.
Personally I think the dems are pleased to have him on our side. He can do the most damage from there. Once again he's proven it.
Past meritorious service does not excuse present behavior. Benedict Arnold was a great American general.
To give a more recent example: John Glenn is a thief and a traitor for stealing a seat on the shuttle at the taxpayers' expense. I don't care what he's done in the past--he is a traitor to his country for taking from her what is not his.
McCain, however, is a weasel and a traitor to his PARTY. I don't care about McCain's service, which is irrelevant there. He's stabbed the GOP in the back and cares not a whit about principle. And while I haven't called him a traitor to his country, given the choice between a free country and expanding his own political power, it's hard to imagine he'd choose the former given his recent votes to restrict freedom. And some folks would certainly view that as anti-American.
I didn't say that any of them were good choices. I'm only saying that the presence of Mr. Guiliani and Mr. Romney (and possibly Chuck Hagel of Nebraska) will diminish Senator McCain's chances to the point that he won't run. I have some hope for Mitt Romney. People always said that Abe Lincoln was squishy on slavery, but after six years of his administration, we didn't have slavery in the United States.
If I had to pick a candidate today, I'd probably pick Bill Owens or George Allen. However, things could change over the next three years, and we need to be open-minded about other possibilities.
Bill
Hmmm.. Personally I worry some about a Hillary/McCain ticket in '08.
There isn't a word to accurately describe McCain. But there is a sound that echoes through the years; Noooo!
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