Posted on 02/17/2007 3:13:16 PM PST by zook
When Majority Leader Harry Reid announced late Thursday that there would be a Saturday Senate session to yet again debate a cowardly nonbinding Iraq resolution, Arizona senator John McCain didn’t change his weekend campaign plans.
Good for Senator McCain.
The Democrats — and at least one GOP opponent’s camp — sent the news that McCain would spend Saturday in Iowa not Washington around as if they had McCain in a Gotcha! moment. “McCain’s been the biggest cheerleader for the president on the war — the least he can do is actually show up for the vote,” a DNC spokesman crowed to the Politico’s Jonathan Martin.
Saturday’s proceedings however, are a disgrace. John McCain, who was for the surge long before the White House was, has made his position on the surge clear. Though vote skipping is not something to encourage in a United States senator, you don’t have to be a campaign donor to be glad that he went to Iowa as planned this Saturday.
John McCain wanted nothing to do with the Saturday stunt. So, instead of catching the first flight back to D.C., McCain blasted the demoralizing antic as “an insult to the public and our soldiers to think a cloture vote to cut off debate on a motion to proceed to another cloture vote to cut off debate about a meaningless resolution is anything other than a partisan stunt and an evasion of our responsibilities.”
As the former Naval aviator and Vietnam prisoner of war said earlier this month when the Senate first took up this nonbinding nonsense: “Where is the intellectual honesty if you think that you're sending young Americans into harm's way in a futile effort? I know if I felt that way, I would say, 'My resolution is a binding resolution that cuts off funding.' That's the intellectually honest approach."
No he was NOT right to stay away.
This was a crucial vote and he should have been there to vote against cloture.
Even if he knew it wouldn't pass, he should have added to the NO votes.
He doesn't have to. The Dems need to pony up 60 votes regardless of whether he is there or not.
McCain is strong on judges too.
But McCain is weak on terrorists.
He pushed through "the terrorists rights bill", which bans not just "torture" but even "degrading treatment" of terrorist prisoners. Better to have the whole country nuked, than to put panties on the heads of terrorists.
BUMP!
"Sorry, I don't see how McCain not casting a vote against the democRAT treason is a good thing."
This wasn't a vote on the proposal. It was a vote on whether or not to end the debate and allow a vote on the proposal. They had to have 60 votes to end the debate.
Let's say this had been a proposal to, oh, abolish the 2nd Amendment, a non-binding resolution. Let's say you're a Senator who knows that they can never get enough votes to bring such a dastardly resolution to a vote. Can't you imagine saying something like, "this is such an assault on freedom, such an insult, that I'm not even going to participate--I'm not even going to help legitimate it by showing up."
I can certainly see myself doing that; refusing to show up for a farce of a sham of an insult, knowing that my adversaries have no chance of winning.
The situation is in no way like people staying home from the polls on election day. It might be a bit like that, if we had Democrats mandating that people come and vote for their candidates. In that case, wouldn't you tell them to go to hell? Wouldn't you stay home?
"This was a crucial vote and he should have been there to vote against cloture."
It was not critical for him to be there to vote against cloture. I'm thinking that maybe some people don't understand how this works. By staying away and making his strong feelings known, he was just as much helping to stop cloture as if he were there. If there aren't 60 votes for cloture, it ain't gonna come to a vote. If there is, it doesn't matter how many votes there are against it.
I just feel like saying here and now that were I a Senator, I'd have done the exact same thing as McCain. I'd state that the whole thing was an insult. I'd make my statements to the press. I'd have encouraged all my colleagues to stay away so as to not legitimate the whole anti-American circus going on in there.
I say this based on the supposition that this was a doomed from the start cloture vote, not an actual vote on the resolution.
So, as I've said before, bravo, John McCain.
All it would have taken is for ALL Republicans to have refused to participate in this non- binding charade of a motion to have made their point -
That Republicans are not up here in Congress to play political games at the expense of our troops.
If all Republicans had united on refusing to vote in respect to our troops then they could have avoided playing sheeple to the people of their districts.
By refusing to vote a Republican senator or representative would be announcing that their careers are demonstrably secondary to the lives of our soldiers. It would have been understood that a vote boycott would signal our disgust with demonrat tactics while supporting our troops.
Only the demonrats would be flailing and cursing among themselves and be shown to be the cowards that they are.
For the life of me, I don't know why Republicans did not unite and adopt a boycott vote strategy - except for the fact that the Hegels and their ilk had to preen for the cameras for re-election purposes.
Congress is a disgrace and McCain is a clown.
"Congress is a disgrace and McCain is a clown."
Well, that's one view. My opinion is that you're half right.
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: THE ULTIMATE "RHINESTONE HERO"
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: THE ULTIMATE "RHINESTONE HERO" Part II
U.S. Sen. John McCain is no War Hero
John McCain: The Manchurian Candidat
McCain Is Booed by Labor Activists
McCain Rides to Kerry's Rescue: "John Kerry is Not Weak on Defense" (Today Show alert)
John McCain SCREAMS AT 9/11 FSA MEMBERS FOR OPPOSING HIS BILL TO GIVE AMNESTY FOR ILLEGALS
A number of articles on McCain. (some the same as above)
McCain/Soros by Rabbi Areyh Spero
Soros' "Reform" (an article about Soros‘ instrumental hand in McCain/Feingold)
Not Child‘s Play [McCain/Schumer bill could effect FR?]
McCain's Letter (McCain aligns with Global Enviro activists)
The Turning Point on Global Warming (McCain and Lieberman Op-Ed Alert)
Climate bill sets stage for debate (Sens. McCain, Obama, and Lieberman join forces)
McCain Looked into Caucusing with Democrats
McCain Still Disliked by Fiscal Conservatives (Club For Growth)
John McCain Goes Left for Money
Sens. Snowe, Collins to head Maine exploratory committee for McCain
Nearly all total crap. Read it before, mostly simple politics and/or efforts to smear a good man. I disagree with McCain on some issues, but he's a good man, strong on defense, strong on the war.
You haven't read any of it. These aren't opinion pieces they're mostly reports of his actual actions which can be verified by multiple sources. Some his own words and some the Senate record itself.
I've read most of the attacks on McCain over the years and recent months. And I've read some that people claimed were "facts" but came from unnamed sources in places like "Vanity Fair." Based on my sampling of these, I am unpersuaded that McCain deserves the vitriol he receives from some members of the right. I respect him and at this point will probably vote for him in our state primary.
Zook, I've given this alot of consideration and I still disagree with you on this.
In my opinion, if the capitol building is going to be full of traitors and seditionist, attempting to use our system and the media to abandon our troops and put this country in jeopardy, then its the duty of those elected to serve to be there.
Hell its all our duty to be there, but especially those who have access to the floor, to the tools of gov't needed to defeat them.
I don't believe there are any unsourced articles in my list of links and certainly nothing from Vanity Fair.
Tell you what. Give me -- summarize for me, 2 or 3 of what you consider to be the strongest arguments against McCain. Let me mull them over and I'll tell you what I think. Fair enough?
It sounds kind of absurd to me. There are 26 links in my post and you can't even take one and credibly debunk it. If you even tried you'd be the first to do that much. I think we should just leave it at your broad brush dismissal of them all as "crap."
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