A Question for FR McCain Detractors

FR | 2-23-08 | Bob J

[Bob J]

Ever since Super Tuesday a super debate has been raging on FR concerning John McCain. I was never a McCain supporter, in fact I penned the post Super Tuesday post "Official FR Drinking Thread" so we could together drown our common disappointments into oblivion.

FReepers seem to be moving into three distinct groups. The first are those that have always supported McCain, a lot or partially. There are those that don't like McCain but are willing to support him because they believe they will get some of what they want or to defeat what the see as the more critical danger, Obama or Clinton. The there's the third group, those that viscerally dislike McCain and vow never to vote for him for any reason.

The actions and motivation for support from the first two groups seem obvious...they would rather see McCain in the White House than a dem. But for the life of me I cannot understand some of the actions of the third.

Allow me to explain.

I understand you dislike McCain and the reasons why. He is far too liberal on many issues, he has stabbed conservatives in the back several times and he is too cozy with the dems. These are all defensible reasons to not vote for him or to vote third party and you have every right to vote as you see fit and for whatever reasons you hold. What I don't understand is why some here are making such concerted efforts to dissuade others from voting for or supporting him.

As flawed as McCain is there is no way a logical case can be made that we would be better off under Obama or Hillary (O&H). Even on most issues where McCain is closer to the left than to us, O&H are much farther to the left than he is and would do much more damage than McCain. On the issues where he is not, the WOT, taxes, abortion, etc., the differences are stark and this does not even take into count extended issues like judicial appointments.

So why are you working so hard, so viscerlly, so nasty, to turn votes against McCain? If you truly feel as you do than go sit out November or cast your vote for your 3rd party candidate. That makes sense. What doesn't make sense is why you push for a McCain and GOP loss.

It may be as simple as "misery loves company". It may be that you validate your own position by getting others to believe as you do. It may be that there are some dem propaganda plants on FR. I don't know but I sure would like to and I know others do as well.

[nyconse]

McCain did not work in a bi-partisan senator...he actively stopped the GOP cold. He sided with the Dems. There is a difference. Dole was bi-partisan. McCain is a traitor period.

[William Terrell]

Allow me to explain, then.

I am not a party man, and I do not vote for any steaming pile the GOP figures it can serve up because I have no choice. You reward this behavior and shortly you find yourself in a country where Hillary might as well have won.

When you deliberately cast a vote for a candidate, you put your personal imprimatur on that candidate, which means you take personal responsibility for the direction he takes the country.

I will take no responsibility for the direction McCain will take the country, and see no destination difference between him and the democrat offerings.

I think we are being squeezed between the two parties, the only games in town, in a consistently socialist direction, democrat and republican alike.

I simply refuse to participate in the degradation of my homeland.

[free_life]

McCain just like Clinton and Barack is an enemy of conservatism and because he is running as a GOP candidate even more so. This is about principled conservatism and the future. I will fight this now and not wait till later when conservatives have lost even more ground.

[KevinB]

Wow, Doughty, nice work!

[supercat]

I don’t think having RINO McCain as President will cause all future Republican presidents to be RINOs. Ford was a RINO and the next GOP president after him was Reagan.

I think the argument is that having a RINO as President will cause all future consecutive Republican Presidents to be RINOs. Ford was not followed immediately by Reagan, was he?

I believe that if McCain wins, he'll run to the left over the next four years. His opponents in 2012 will be even more liberal than today's. If we can't survive a Democrat win in 2008 (maybe we can; maybe we can't) how will we be able to survive one in 2012?

[JasonC]

McCain has polled better in head to head matchups against either Dem for well over a year, and today he beats Hillary by five points including all the key states (Ohio e.g., also Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada) while trailing Obama by five. The reason is simple - he is between five and ten points to Bush's left, and so is the electorate. He might well still lose, but he is more competitive precisely because he is a lower "bid", and there are plenty of moderates nationwide who aren't willing to go all the way to pacifism on the war, and that is what the Dems offer there.

[nyconse]

Yeah, I saw your post. You are right. There is little point in arguing with McCainiacs. A number of posters got banned on a thread my hubby was on a while ago...the newbies complained to the moderators. My hubby was banned briefly, but was reinstated. He is a long time freeper and certainly does not support Dems-he just doesn’t support McCain.

[labette]

Amen.

[Eva]

I’ve seen polls where McCain beats Hillary, but not Obama. But, I don’t put much stock in polls, not when I see the numbers of people that are voting in Democrat primaries compared to the numbers that are voting in Republican primaries.

[calcowgirl]

Hmmm... why wouldn't I support McCain?

A Day in the Life of President McCain (Thread #1460)

Tomorrow, President McCain begins his second term in office. Winning in a landslide due largely to the vote of America's 20 million new citizens, McCain pledged further integration of the Americas... In a news conference today, Vice President Lieberman spoke briefly about the Administration's plans to expand it's mutual efforts with the United Nations for global conservation and to fight the threat of global warming. ...

[E. Cartman]

A significant number of that group want to see the GOP utterly destroyed so that their favorite third party can take it’s place.

While I don't necessarily want the destruction of the GOP, if that's what it takes to once more have a conservative party in the country, then I say without qualification, "AMEN!".

[Polybius]

If you elect McCain as President, he will define conservatism. I am not willing to allow conservatism to mean: pro-amnesty, pro-human-caused Global Warming, anti-first amendment, pro-terrorists-have-civil-rights or any of the other left-wing quackery John McCain has embraced over the years.

We Conservatives make up 60% of the GOP but only 24% of all registered voters in America are Republicans. That makes us Conservatives a pretty small percentage of America as a whole.

The mood of America as a whole swings back and forth like a pendulum and the pendulum is not heading towards the right in 2008. American primary voters, not "the GOP" decided that, over all, they preferred Moderate Right of Center McCain to a Conservative candidate this particular year.

McCain will not redefine "conservatism" any more than George Bush, the Elder redefined Ronald Reagan's personal brand of conservatism. (Although many now forget, many Conservatives during the Reagan Administration believe that Reagan himself was a Conservative-In-Name-Only. Ronald Reagan actually signed into law a blanket illegal alien amnesty with none of the waiting periods and penalties that McCain proposed.) McCain will define his own "maverick" brand of the Moderate Right of Center political philosophy that constitutes the other 40% of the Republican Party.

I also don’t see why I should be expected to be more loyal to the republican party than the candidate we nominated for President.

Does any true American patriot really give a rat's ass about the "Party" when you have to choose between Party and America?

Joe Lieberman wants desperately to win a war that is vital to U.S. interests and safety while Ron Paul wants to bug out of the war and hand Victory to our enemies in the naive America First mentality that brought us the disaster of World War II in Europe.

If Joe Lieberman (D) and Ron Paul (R) were the choices for President in November 2008, I would vote Lieberman without a moment's hesitation to win the war and "Republican Party loyalty" be damned.

The way the political pendulum swung in 2008, our viable choices in November are a Moderate Right of Center candidate that will do what it takes to win a strategically vital war and the most Far Left of Center Senator in Congress who has declared a war that has already been won as "lost" and will abandon 70% of the World's known oil reserves to the military control of suicidal Iranian Islamist fanatics who are seeking nuclear weapons and ICBM's capable of delivering those weapons to America aka "Satan Incarnate".

**********

Obama 13 months ago:

Published Jan. 30, 2007 ...... Obama wants troops home by spring ’08 ……. Illinois senator, presidential candidate introduces bill to force redeployment

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Hillary 13 months ago:

Published January 17, 2007 ........ Hillary Clinton opposes Iraq troops 'surge'

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McCain 14 months ago:

Published December 27, 2006 ..... Novak: McCain's 'aggressive surge' stance backfiring ........ conservative columnist Robert Novak suggests that Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) "aggressive" push for a U.S. troop expansion -- or "surge" -- in Iraq may be costing the top 2008 GOP contender in the polls, especially when matched against another presumed front-runner, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY). "The decline in the polls of [McCain], as measured against [Clinton], reflects more than declining Republican popularity ......... "It connotes public disenchantment with McCain's aggressive advocacy of a 'surge' of up to 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq

"I understand the polls show only 18 percent of the American people support my position. But I have to do what's right, what I believe is right and what my experience and knowledge and background tells me is the right thing to do in order to save this situation in Iraq ... In war, my dear friends, there's no such thing as compromise. You either win or you lose." - Sen. John McCain's reaction to the Iraq Study Group Report, 2006

**********

Three months ago in Iraq:

Troop Surge, Iraqis’ Anger Puts al Qaeda ‘On the Run’

**********

Come November, I will vote for Moderate Right of Center John McCain to win the war.

I refuse to lose the war because I am having a temper tantrum that the 80% of America that does not consider itself "Conservative Republican" does not happen to share my first choice for President this particular year.

[JasonC]

McCain sided with Bush on immigration, and the base is more mad about that than anything else. That wasn't splitting from the party, it was the party itself splitting and he staying with the president.

Yes McCain sided with the Dems in a number of fights in Bush's first term in particular. He was also effective at a lot of it, which many republicans particularly resented. But party loyalty is a poor reason to give for sitting at home or voting for Obama. If your own standard isn't party loyalty, pretending it should be for others is remarkably inconsistent.

[SAMWolf]

I believe McCain, based on his past actions, will give a Democratic Congress everything they want. I’d rather concentrate on giving Obama or Hillary a Republican COngress to fight against. If we don’t get a Republican Congress I’d prefer to have a Democrat take us down the Socialist Road rather than a “Republican” like McCain.

[Checkers]

“Some of us believe that McCain is potentially more damaging than Obama because we believe he will pursue a Dem agenda. He will continue reaching across the aisle and will ram through leftist legislation-including a new fairness doctrine-by colluding with Dems and strong arming congressional Repubs.

One can expect the Repubs to oppose Obama, but how are they going to oppose McCain? There is no reason for anyone to believe McCain would govern in a conservative or even Repub manner based on the last nine years.”

Good post.

[nyconse]

McCain will not win the war...his Dem buddies will force a withdrawal...I am sorry to say.

[JasonC]

I've seen the same, I don't put too much stock in polls either, because people are free and can do whatever they like right up to the last minute. I don't think elections are easy to predict, and can point to the sites where anyone who thinks otherwise has a license to mint money. But in fact they fail to do so. I agree the Dems will be very strong this year and Obama is certainly the odds on favorite to win right now - I'd put our chances at 1 in 4. But we fight as well as we can to stop the worse man from winning, that is all. In the end, the American people are sovereign and will make up their own minds.

[exit82]

“When confronted on the issue of who will advocate for conservatism if John is president you folks don’t have an answer. When John reaches out to the democrats they won’t oppose him. Enough in his own party won’t opposed him to block his desires. And then there’s John himself. He and the Republican party leadership will be trashing conservatives in the exact same manner you have here. “You folks are fringe wing-nuts.” It is appauling that any person who calls themself a conservative could decide that being a part of this would be a great day for conservatism. And that being the case, how in the sam hell could it be a good day for the nation we supposedly love.

We have come to the place where we can watch a man disect Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and then advocate for him to be President. And then turn our backs on loyal nation loving citizens who dispise what the man stands for, and insult them to their faces.”

Well stated, Doughty One. Thank you.

[E. Cartman]

I just don’t believe McCain has the temperament to be president. That is the first question I ask before I look at individual issues which I do agree with McCain more than the two clowns.

A socialist, African-American metrosexual or a crotchety, psychotic war hero?? Some choice.

[Squeako]

One reason I can't support McCain, beyond every horrible anti-freedom bill with his name on it, is that I spoke in 2000 with a Congressman at a dinner and asked him why John McCain was not the supported Republican nominee. He said, "Because he would be a dictator and not work with Congress." This certainly seems to be an accurate assessment of McCain's personality. We talked a bit more, but he was completely opposed to John McCain.

Now, however, he has said in a recent interview that he will work with him, and that's the problem. He and other R's will work with McCain to advance those bills that are antithetical to conservatism, though not necessarily Big Tent Republicanism. Hillary and Obama would be utterly opposed.

So, now we have a nominee that, frankly, no one that I've seen is excited about, running against a rock star (presuming Hillary doesn't have Obama rubbed out). I can't tell you how many times I've been out and heard people talking about "Obama this, Obama that", and flipping through the newspaper reading about him. All those young people are going to be pulling the lever for "The First Black President" to become part of American History, and then voting "straight Democrat ticket".

What do you think the debates are going to look like to them? Regardless of whether Obama actually says anything meaningful or offers any real solution to anything, it will be "Young Black Rock Star versus Old Angry White Man." I think you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who faints at a McCain rally, unless it's from too many Centrum Silvers.

The point is that McCain stands and fights for very little of what I believe (and fights hardest for what I don't), and his "Maverick Republican" pedigree would only mean cooperation with fellow Republicans to advance those things, while a Democrat would be opposed. It almost seems that the Republican party has taken a dive this election.