On Foreign Policy: Its McCain vs McCain

Amid the din of the dueling democrats, people seem to have forgotten about that other guy in the presidential race—you know, John McCain. McCain is said to be benefiting from this politically because his rivals are tearing each other apart. In fact, few people are paying much attention to what the Republican nominee is saying, or subjecting it to any serious scrutiny.

On March 26, McCain gave a speech on foreign policy in Los Angeles that was billed as his most comprehensive statement on the subject. It contained within it the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years. Yet almost no one noticed.

In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil—but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.

We have spent months debating Barack Obama's suggestion that he might, under some circumstances, meet with Iranians and Venezuelans. It is a sign of what is wrong with the foreign-policy debate that this idea is treated as a revolution in U.S. policy while McCain's proposal has barely registered. What McCain has announced is momentous—that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow).

OK, you've repeated it.

McQueeg still is not, nor ever has been, a conservative.

On foreign policy, he's a recycled cold warrior, which is standalone -- any number of former Democrats, JFK, Jackson, Nunn, Byrd in his younger days, Stu Symington, dozens of others, were cold warriors yet hardly conservative.

On domestic policy he's a phony ''budget hawk''. Show me a major pork bill that he hasn't voted for during his Senate tenure. There might be one or two in the past 20 years, but he's voted in favour of the vast majority of them. A conservative votes against these (or would have voted against these) on pure principle.

He's down-the-line for open borders, which only can be called a ''conservative'' view by those who still fantasise that GWB is a conservative.

Juan McQueeg -- Your Faux-Conservative Candidate in '08.

I have issues with John McCain on the borders, illegals, Gitmo, ANWR and “waterboarding” BUT for you to say that “McQueeg still is not, nor ever has been, a conservative” is blatantly false.

“The latest release of the American Conservative Union’s ratings are for 2006. Those ratings indicate:

(1) that John McCain has had a lifetime conservative record of 82.3 percent,
(2) that his record was more conservative than any Democrat in the Senate, including Barack Obama who had a lifetime conservative record of only 8 percent and Hillary Clinton who had a lifetime conservative rating of only 9 percent, and
(3) that while 37 Republican Senators in 2006 had more conservative records, 16 Republican Senators in 2006 had less conservative records. This means that John McCain had a more conservative voting record than 62 of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate.

Based on these ratings, though not quite as conservative as the average Republican Senator, John McCain is clearly a conservative. Claims that he is a moderate or a liberal are not supported by this evidence.

I double checked these findings by examining the congressional ratings produced by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). The ADA is the self-proclaimed “premier liberal lobbying organization.” Like the ACU’s ratings of conservative voting in Congress, the ADA rates the liberal voting records of House and Senate members. Their latest ratings are also for 2006, though they don’t list lifetime ratings. Still, for 2006, do the liberals think John McCain is one of them? What do their ratings say about John McCain’s record?

The ADA ratings for 2006 were based on 20 recorded votes. The ADA ratings indicate:

(1) that John McCain voted the liberal way on only 15 percent of these issues (85 percent of his votes were conservative),
(2) that this was less liberal than any Democrat in the Senate, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who both voted for the liberal position 95 percent of the time, and
(3) that while 41 Republican Senators in 2006 voted the liberal position less often, 8 Republicans had more liberal voting records, and 4 had records identical to McCain’s.

The ADA record is consistent with the ACU record on McCain. He is a conservative, not a liberal. There are Senators who are more conservative (or less liberal) than him, but most of the Senate is considerably more liberal and less conservative than him. The idea that McCain is a liberal has absolutely NO support at all in the overall record, whether assessed by the ACU or the ADA. The peculiar idea that there is no difference between McCain and either Clinton or Obama is also just not supported by the record. As John Adams said, and as Ronald Reagan reiterated, “facts are stubborn things.”

McCain’s conservative critics need to reacquaint themselves with the facts and regain some perspective. He is not 100 percent conservative, but 85 percent or 82 percent conservative is a conservative and is far, far different than the sub-ten percent conservative record of the Democrats’ very liberal Senators Clinton and Obama.”

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/02/john-mccain-is-a-conservative-deal-with-it/

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.