John McCain and War

National Review Online ^ | February 04, 2008, 5:00 p.m. | Andrew C. McCarthy

[Yosemitest]

McCain Mirage
The senator is not ready-for-prime-time commander-in-chief.

By Andrew C. McCarthy

Senator John McCain’s ascendancy in the Republican presidential race has been truly remarkable.
Yet, it’s no groundswell.

To this point, about two out of every three primary and caucus participants have voted against him.
If the Democrats and independents some states permit to crash the Grand Old Party were factored out, his standing in the Republican base would be even less impressive.
Still, you have to hand it to his admirers:

They have parlayed his thin support into an aura of inevitability.
The glow could intensify this week, when McCain is likely, finally, to rack up some more impressive numbers … in delegate-heavy blue states that rarely vote Republican when it counts, in November.
(Full disclosure: I support Governor Mitt Romney.)

As it happens, the received wisdom about McCain’s suddenly broad support mirrors the regnant narrative about his chief qualification for the job: It’s a mirage.

SINGING THE DEMOCRATS’ TUNE
The senator is portrayed as the GOP field’s only ready-for-prime-time commander-in-chief. Surely, we are told, this is what matters most in an era of national-security peril.
For McCain’s conservative supporters, it is the tirelessly restated rationale for overlooking that,

apart from a convenient flip on the Bush tax cuts,
the senator’s major contribution to debates on economic policy is class-warfare rhetoric
— liberally spiced with the same demagoguery (this time, against “the rich”)
by which his politics consistently turns issues from Iraq
to interrogation
to filibusters
to immigration
to campaign-finance
to global warming
into morality plays,
John the Virtuous pitted against hordes of unfeeling, self-indulgent, partisan rogues.

The sales job is a myth.
In reality, a McCain presidency would promise an entirely conventional, center-left, multilateralism.

If you liked the second Bush term,

if you liked Clintonian foreign policy,
you will find much to admire in a Commander-in-Chief McCain.
There would be the same agonizing over European and Islamic perceptions of America;
the same doctrinaire commitment to the alchemy of democracy promotion;
and the same fondness for heaping more unaccountable bureaucratic sprawl
atop the already counter-productive agencies and multinational institutions
that frustrate the United States at every turn.

Don’t take my word for it. Read McCain’s own Foreign Affairs essay, published late last year, in which the senator dilates on his philosophy. The leitmotif of “An Enduring Peace Built on Freedom” is that America’s tattered standing in the world must be restored. Typical is this:

"We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves.
We must be willing to listen to our democratic allies.
Being a great power does not mean that we can do whatever we want whenever we want,
nor should we assume that we have all the wisdom, knowledge, and resources necessary to succeed.
When we believe international action — whether military, economic, or diplomatic — is necessary, we must work to persuade our friends and allies that we are right.
And we must also be willing to be persuaded by them. To be a good leader, America must be a good ally."

Much scorn deservedly came Governor Mike Huckabee’s way when, in his own Foreign Affairs piece, he scalded the “Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality,” so “counterproductive at home and abroad.”
Yet McCain’s very similar (if less-bracing) riffs have drawn little attention. The Bush years, he says, have left us in desperate need “to restore and replenish the world’s faith in our nation and our principles.” “America” thus “needs a president who can revitalize the country’s purpose and standing in the world.” Even as such important European governments as France and Germany have become more conservative and drawn closer to American leadership, McCain laments that President Bush has “frayed” the “bonds we share with Europe” — thanks, no doubt, to “the kind of abusive tactics properly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions” that he intimates have been standard fare.

Close your eyes, and you can hear these same lines regurgitated by any conventional Democrat, whether it’s Sen. Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama, or even Sen. John Kerry — the Democrats’ last standard-bearer who, you may recall, entreated McCain to be his running mate, the extent of their common ground being patent.
Contrary to the assurances of McCain’s admirers, his own essay tells us the senator is still the same guy who in 2000, upon being asked what he would do immediately upon being elected president, said he would turn, among others, to Sen. Kerry, Sen. Joe Biden, and Zbigniew Brzezinski (President Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser) to “to get foreign policy, national security issues back on track.”

SUSTAINING THE DEMOCRACY PROJECT
We must, of course, give Sen. McCain the obligatory nod for supporting the “surge.”
Admittedly, it is disquieting to hear McCain on the campaign trail battering former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld (whom, as Salon reminds us, he was praising for having “done a fine job” more than a year after the Iraq invasion).
And his periodic reliance on General Eric Shinseki

— a Clinton favorite who famously urged that “several hundred thousand troops” would be needed for Iraq
— raises many questions that have gone unexplored, such as:
why McCain told the Hartford Courant right before the Iraq invasion
that he had “no qualms about our strategic plans,”
rationalizing that lean force levels “were very successful in Afghanistan”;
and whether McCain is now saying Shinseki was right
to call for two or three times the force level envisioned by General David Petraeus’s strategy,
which McCain has vigorously supported.

Still, the senator must be given his due.
To have appeared to be driven from Iraq by al-Qaeda would have been a disaster of incalculable proportions for the United States.
When many around him, Left and Right, seemed ready to abandon ship,

the sheer force of McCain’s will
and the immensity of his stature
staved off defeat. With the increased troop levels he fought for, we have routed al-Qaeda in Baghdad. Of the four credible candidates of both parties remaining in the race, none has an accomplishment such as this to tout.
The senator’s advocates argue that he deserves enormous credit, and they’re right.

But does that translate into deserving the presidency?
In terms of the greater war on terror, which is the central foreign-policy challenge for the next administration,

the surge is vastly overrated,
and the rationale for it is confused at best.
We are not just at war in Iraq; we are at war with radical Islam.
We don’t need a Baghdad strategy; we need a global war strategy — or, at the very least, a regional one.
Victory is not an Iraqi “democracy”; it is an America safe from Islamic terror.

Sen. McCain tells us he is the best fit for taking this war to our enemies,

but what’s the evidence of that?
The point of the surge, as the soporific story goes, is to give Iraqis the space needed to make hard political choices. Here’s the problem:
Few people outside the Beltway care much about the politics of Iraq.
And for those who do, democracy is a bottom-up phenomenon that is the work of generations;
no central government — much less one run by Shiite fundamentalists — is going to impose democracy top-down.
Meanwhile, much of al-Qaeda’s leadership remains safely harbored in Iran,
and thanks to over two dozen paramilitary training camps,
al-Qaeda and the Taliban now mount about a quarter-million trained warriors in Pakistan and Afghanistan
(versus approximately 50,000 NATO troops — about half of which are in non-combat roles).

Sen. McCain admirably talks about “winning” in Iraq.
But the war isn’t limited to, or even principally about, Iraq.
The surge has pacified Baghdad, but we’re in serious danger of losing the wider war.
And, in fact, the jury is still out on whether the government Americans have been asked to sacrifice so much for in Iraq will actually be an American ally when it comes to Iran, the central problem in the region.

Sen. McCain suggests no strategy for winning the wider war.
He talks about fighting radical Islam, but he doesn’t evince much understanding of radical Islam — he seems to think, like the Bush administration, that it can be democratized into submission.

Fundamentalist Islam, which commands the loyalty of tens of millions of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims, is anti-democratic:

It rejects the authority of people to govern themselves,
denies freedom of conscience,
demands imposition of sharia law,
places men above women and Muslims above non-Muslims,
and adopts jihad as the violent method of imposing its hegemonic ideology.
We must suppress its capacity to project power wherever that capacity is found — not just in Iraq.

There is no proof that democracy would cure what ails the Muslim world,

it is not our responsibility to take on such a dubious burden,
and it is preposterous to think we can win this war simply by urging Western democracy,
which many Muslim countries don’t want.
If you actually buy the “democracy will save us” theory,
it is equally foolish to believe democracy’s cause
is promoted by current State Department practices,
such as the installation of constitutions (in Iraq and Afghanistan)
that establish Islam as the state religion
and elevate sharia as a principal source of law.
And it is as counterfactual as it is counterintuitive to claim our interests are advanced by popular elections,
which have elevated Hezbollah into key government posts in Lebanon,
Hamas into control of much of the Palestinian territories,
and fundamentalist Shiites into control of Iraq.

This is the strategy of the Clinton years and the second Bush term:

Islam is the religion of peace, and democracy conquers all.
It is not a strategy for victory, but McCain appears fully bought-in.
His record conveys little indication that he grasps the inevitable connection between the dominance of Islam in a region and the sustenance of radical Islamic action in that region.
Indeed, in 1999, against the tide of conservative (and much other sensible) opposition,
he tried to push the Clinton administration into a ground war in Kosovo,
despite the absence of any vital American interests.
He thought it would enhance our image in the world to show solidarity with Muslims
— never mind that these Muslims included anti-Western fundamentalists.

McCain, moreover, continues to believe, as he wrote in Foreign Affairs, that the “long-elusive quest for peace between Israel and the Palestinians must remain a priority.”
Why this is so is not explained.
McCain adopts the rose-tinted Clinton/Bush glasses through which Hamas appears as the sole cause of the quest’s elusiveness. This wishes away the stubborn fact that

the Palestinians as a society reject Israel’s right to exist
and accept terror attacks as the legitimate means to that end.
So while “Hamas must be isolated,” McCain intends to “intensif[y]” our “commitment to finding an enduring solution”
— meaning more negotiations with Fatah,
the Arafat legacy organization that maintains its own terror wing,
seeks rapprochement with Hamas,
and is committed by its charter to the destruction of the Jewish state.

Translation: Maintain the same failed status quo.
And therein lies the folly of McCain’s experience argument:

being involved in many past policy arguments
does not mean being on the right side of them.
What Americans want is a strategy to suppress jihadist power wherever it rears its head
and to prevent radical Islam from spreading its tentacles in our homeland
— which has a lot more to do with immigration enforcement
than peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
And we want such a strategy implemented
without a lot of temporizing over the likely reaction of the “Muslim Street,”
even if that upsets Europeans.

His democracy infatuation is such that McCain also plans to create a “League of Democracies.”

Evidently, this new multi-lateral behemoth would do what the United Nations is supposed to do, but doesn’t.
We are not told what criteria would break a country into the league (Russia and Iran, for example, insist they are democracies),
much less how those criteria would be enforced.
McCain does take pains, though, to assure us that the league “would not supplant the UN or other international organizations but complement them[.]”
Great.
This initiative, meanwhile, will merely redouble his promised effort to “institutionaliz[e] our cooperation [with the European Union] on such issues as climate change, foreign assistance, and democracy promotion.”
What’s not to love for a conservative?

THE DOMESTIC AGENDA
Sen. McCain’s initiatives on the international stage would be shored up by similarly dubious domestic policies.
On the intelligence front, that means yet another new bureaucracy.

This is rich.
Only four years ago, Sen. McCain insisted that the gross misfeasance of our $40 billion, 17-agency intelligence community could be cured by adopting the 9/11 Commission’s typical Washington fix:

the addition of another agency, which, it risibly explained, would streamline inter-agency intelligence flow.
Since then, the Office of the National Intelligence Director
— dominated by career foreign-service bureaucrats rather than operational intelligence types
— has predictably bloated into an empire that duplicates much of the CIA’s work (as well as its problems).
The result has been what you’d expect:
in nothing flat the directorate generated one estimate telling us that Iran was busy as a beaver building nukes,
then another telling us that Iran hasn’t been in the nuke business for years.

Now McCain wants to build on this, er, success with a “modern-day OSS” (the original OSS having been the WWII-era Office of Strategic Services).

Basically, this new agency would do what the CIA is supposed to do now, but doesn’t.
McCain, of course, promises that it would be the first “small, nimble, can-do organization” in the history of governmental bureaucracies.
He conveniently omits, however, that the original OSS ultimately became the enormous, sclerotic, no-can-do CIA …
i.e., the very entity that purportedly makes McCain’s new OSS necessary.
You’ll be shocked to learn the senator does not propose to eliminate the CIA.
Yet again, the notion is that we will get better intelligence by continuing to add new agencies
… even as Sen. McCain burnishes his image as the scourge of wasteful government spending.

It’s a foolish idea, but it’s the sort of thing one expects from an irascible senate maverick

— an old Washington hand who is quick to exploit the trendy concern-of-the-moment, demagoguing anyone who dares worry about the bigger picture.
Take the senator’s “McCain amendment,” the 2005 legislation that extended Fifth Amendment rights to terrorists overseas.
In its 2000 Dickerson decision, the Supreme Court held that if a person has a Fifth Amendment privilege, he is entitled to Miranda rights —
i.e., the right to an attorney, at the expense of the American taxpayer, during all questioning.
That means any terrorist we capture overseas could plausibly claim Miranda protection under the McCain amendment.
In short, leaving aside that the chief effect of McCain’s grandstanding was to intimidate our interrogation officers
(stoking a fear of investigations that prompted purchases of litigation insurance and a drastic reduction in intelligence-collection),
his legislation could eventually shut down interrogations.
A future court, or even Justice Department, could very well read the McCain amendment in conjunction with Dickerson to require that defense attorneys be inserted into the interrogation mix shortly after capture
— long before the “advanced psychological techniques,”
with which the high-minded senator plans to replace those “abusive” Bush tactics, have any chance to work.

When confronted with this possibility, Sen. McCain and his backers snicker that such suggestions are absurd.
Critics are duly expected to melt, and many of them do.
Some of us, however, have actually had to fight the jihad in the courtroom.
That the senator clearly had no intention whatsoever to lay the groundwork for Mirandizing the battlefield will, you can bet, have little impact on a judge

asked down the road to rule on the admissibility of a terrorist’s confession or on a jihadist’s claim that his McCain Amendment rights have been violated.
If you think otherwise, you haven’t been following the federal courts for the past half-century.

Senate Democrats serially insist that the McCain Amendment prohibits waterboarding.
Sorry to break the news, but the legal argument that it requires Miranda is no less viable. That’s why the legislation’s ambiguity was so irresponsible.
McCain’s campaign against coercive interrogation methods

— tactics that saved American lives after 9/11;
tactics, such as waterboarding, that were rarely ever used
and that had been stopped two years before the McCain amendment;
and tactics that Sen. McCain himself has conceded are excusable in a truly dire national emergency — was reckless.
Sure, the media ate it up, just like they’ll eat up the League of Democracies, the new OSS, and the new wave of overtures to transnational progressives in Europe.
But it’s reflective of an unattractive heedlessness.

Similarly, Sen. McCain wants to close the terrorist holding facility at Guantanamo Bay.
Interrogations there have produced intelligence that has saved American lives.
Bringing the terrorists detained there into the United States would risk vesting them with the same due process rights as the American citizens they are pledged to kill

— including generous discovery of our intelligence,
and our methods and sources for obtaining it.

What is the upside to giving them this precious information?
For Sen. McCain it is — again — what he sees as America’s reputation in the world.
But look: America has selflessly freed millions of Muslims from tyrannical regimes.
Most of us are a lot more concerned about protecting Americans

than about America’s reputation in Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Europe, and the rest of the vaunted “international community.”
The world doesn’t hold a candle to our record of promoting human freedom (to say nothing of our relieving Europe of its duty to fight in, and pay for, its own defense).
And the world’s elites will continue giving us no credit regardless of McCain’s exertions.
If Gitmo upsets other countries, the problem lies with them, not with Gitmo.

The mystery is

why anyone would think the foreign-affairs part of Sen. McCain’s brain is not in sync with the part that produced:
McCain/Feingold legislation that eviscerates core free-speech rights
on which a functioning democratic republic depends;
or proposals for massive, unregulated immigration (from someone claiming the mantle of national security paragon, no less);
or global-warming legislation, the latest iteration of the senator’s Big Government regulatory penchant (we are talking, after all, about someone who has suggested federal government intervention in everything from professional boxing to major league baseball);
or opposition to the Bush tax cuts in class-warfare rhetoric so strident it would make Hillary Clinton blush (including a swipe just last week against “greedy people on Wall Street who need to be punished”);
or the Gang of 14 deal, which undermined a conservative effort to end Democrat filibusters against the Bush judicial nominees.

The surge can only camouflage so much.

Sen. McCain’s readiness to be the commander-in-chief fit for today’s perils is the grand hope his supporters offer to overcome substantial conservative doubts.
It’s a mirage.

— Andrew C. McCarthy is an NRO contributing editor. The views expressed above are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of any candidate or organization.

[calcowgirl]

And do they raise terrorists?

Who is "they" that you are referring to? The communists? And what is your definition of terrorism? The communists advocate violence and most definitely have engaged in things that qualify as terrorism, under my definition anyway.

More importantly, do they recognize the sheer madness of attacking us with a nuclear weapon? Of course they do. Do you seriously believe that Iran, Syria, or N. Korea wouldn't use a nuke on us, via terrorist?

To what end? Do you think they would do this without provocation? If they do, they know what the repercussions would be. It ain't pretty.

[calcowgirl]

Where in her post was there any "wise ass" comment? You're getting hysterical.

I think he doesn't like it when I pointed out the flaws in his post thereby challenging the "many years experience within the Party and a of Conservative credentials" that he touted (while refusing to back-up). His referencing Wikipedia didn't make a compelling case.

[Yosemitest]

This is one of the WORST and MOST CRITICAL elections that I've seen in my 50 plus years of living!!!

I've suggested, several times, other possibilities for candidates, and as of today, I'm supporting Bob Barr, but I'd rather have Newt Gingrich, Donald Rumsfield, Duncan Hunter, or even Oliver North, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or G. Gorden Liddy, than the current piece of trash the Republican party is running.

As for your concern about Supreme Court worries, read this, and get a clue.... McCain is a Democrat, plain and simple!!!!
I recommend this blog.

McCain, Judicial Nominations, Sleeves, and Warts
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 by Beldar at 07:43 AM

I don't much care about Wall Street Journal political reporter John Fund's report yesterday that's roiling the blogosphere and cable news talking head shows. Fund reported that Sen. John McCain

"has told conservatives he would be happy to appoint the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court. But he indicated he might draw the line on a Samuel Alito, because
'he wore his conservatism on his sleeve.'"

Since Sen. McCain led a gang of other Republican renegade senators in deserting their party's sitting president and colluding with the opposition party to throw some of that president's pending judicial nominations down the toilet — jettisoning along with their confirmation chances the chance for a constitutional showdown that could have ended senatorial filibustering of judicial nominees — there is nothing that Sen. McCain can do, and certainly nothing he can say or write as a campaign promise, to restore his credibility with me on the subject of judicial appointments.


Oh, yes, he did vote to confirm Roberts and Alito. But could we possibly set a lower bar than that for someone who's supposed to be a leader of his party and a contender for the opportunity to fill as many as three SCOTUS seats in the next term?

There are a lot of good things that can be said about Sen. McCain by good conservatives — but not on this issue. By taking the "constitutional option" (a/k/a "nuclear option" in Dem-speak) off the table, McCain and his fellow "maverick" GOP cronies doomed not only a handful of worthy circuit and district court nominees to non-confirmation, they ensured that the White House would thereafter dare not make any more controversial nominations to those vitally important lower courts. For "controversial nominations," read "demonstratedly and predictably conservative nominations just like Roberts and Alito would have been, but for the higher profile of SCOTUS nominations."

The only way that the Dems could justify stonewalling Dubya's circuit and district court nominations was that the stonewalling happens mostly out of sight, and rarely if ever makes a blip on the general public's radar screens. They couldn't get away with denying a floor vote to a SCOTUS nominee. But John McCain led the deal that let the Dems guarantee that they could continue to exercise an effective veto on circuit and district court nominations for the remainder of George W. Bush's term, regardless of the outcome of the 2006 elections. The unquestionable result of the Gang of 14's "compromise," as brokered by John McCain, will be two-fold:

There will be more judicial vacancies at the end of the Bush-43 term than there ought to be;
and such district and circuit judges as have been nominated and confirmed by January 2009 will be mostly bland ones whom McCain's Democratic allies permitted to go through because the Dems couldn't dredge up or even manufacture remotely plausible objections.
Some of them will nevertheless turn out to be very fine judges despite their lack of histories around which the Dems could weave their objections. But if your goal is conservative judges, giving the Dems a near-secret and unaccountable veto, which ie exactly what McCain did, is a very, very bad idea.

No sir, the day John McCain led the Gang of 14, he forfeited all of my trust — irrevocably — on judicial selection issues. No ma'am, I don't care what words he mouths now on that subject.

In fact, I'm slightly more inclined to believe Rudy Giuliani's promises about appointing conservative judges than McCain's. Sure, it's contrary to Giuliani's own stance on many social issues; and I'm far from entirely comfortable about Giuliani's campaign promises on this and other subjects. But at least Giuliani hasn't already betrayed this particular trust, and then equivocated about that betrayal. already shown himself to have no backbone, and to be a willing collaborator with the Dems, specifically when it comes to appointing judges at the circuit and district court levels. To the limited extent that I care at all what McCain says now, the mere fact that McCain continues to defend the Gang of 14 deal out-shouts anything else he says. And saying now that he "fought for" the abandoned nominees is just a palpable lie. The way to fight for them was to continue at least threatening to use the "constitutional option." There was no other way to fight for them. There was no other way to even get their nominations to the floor for a vote! To even pretend that those abandoned nominees had a chance once the Gang of 14 struck its deal is comparable to the Brits and French saying in September 1939,

"Well, we did still root for the Czechoslovaks after we forced them to give Hitler the Sudetenland last year. Gosh, we really thought they still had a good chance, but we just ran out of time. How could we know he'd go on to gobble up the rest of their country, and Poland too?"

Stepping back and looking at the big picture:

Collaborating with the Dems to defeat the Bush Administration's most conservative circuit and district court judicial nominees isn't remotely the same as collaborating with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese while American POWs (including McCain) were imprisoned. John McCain is not John Kerry, and the Dems are only misguided political enemies of the GOP and conservatism, not profound and literally mortal enemies of western civilization. And I'm sure that in his own mind, McCain has thoroughly rationalized what he did, just like he's rationalized (and now is soft-pedaling) his prior stands on campaign finance reform and immigration.
I'm not one of those self-destructive conservative idiots who is going to sit out the 2008 election if McCain turns out to be the GOP nominee. Indeed, if he is nominated — which I still think is unlikely, but I no longer can rule out as a possibility — I'll support him, and defend him, and promote him, and vote for him against whoever the Dems nominate. I will accentuate the positive, for him or any other GOP nominee.

But just don't insult my intelligence by pretending that John McCain is a reliable conservative on the subject of judicial nominations. From the point of view of any knowledgeable conservative, this is one of the huge warts on this particular candidate. And he doesn't have to "wear" that particular lack of conservatism "on his sleeve," because it's a wart that's as plain as his nose. You can secure my enthusiastic agreement that the Democratic alternatives are uglier, that they're practically "all-wart." But quit trying to pull my leg about McCain and this particular subject, okay?

Maybe if McCain is making a SCOTUS nomination, he really will pick another Roberts or Alito. What concerns me, though, is that at best, he'll gladly let the Dems pressure him into packing the circuit and district courts with Kennedys, O'Connors, and occasional Souters. I have no doubt that John McCain would be willing to take on the Dems on matters of national security, even if it means a bloody, long-term dispute. But I also have no doubt that if pressed (and he will be), he would make his picks, and then cut quiet deals left and right, to avoid such fights over judicial nominees below the SCOTUS level. Since he's already abandoned conservative principles and cut a deal with the Dems on nominees to those courts even when the GOP controlled the Senate, why would he possibly stand up to them as president, especially if they continue to control the Senate?

And you expect conservatives to support this liberal piece of crap McCain???

I'll never, ever, NEVER ... vote FOR McCain.
Can you spell NEVER???

[TigersEye]

I'm not comparing McCain with Obama or anyone else. Perhaps that's why my position ASTOUNDS you. He is simply not fit for office, any office, for numerous outstanding reasons IMO. I don't see him as a flawed candidate or a less then ideal candidate. I see him as a clear and present danger. I came to that opinion long before I had ever heard of Obama and McCain has only increased my reasons for thinking so since then and in dramatic fashion.

Apparently I can't show you anything that will cause you to think, as I do, that he is. I have read dozens of posts supporting him and none convince me that he is not. Almost none of them try. Like you they just say he is less unfit than Hillary or Obama. That argument negates the meaning of the word unfit.

[Yosemitest]

As far as the slide towards Democrats in California, you left out one very important fact,

that Democrats are proud of, but hide at every chance they get.

Go ahead, read it ... at "* * * VOTER FRAUD, AGAIN! * * * " ,

or at the original source from www.worldnetdaily.com.

This was Bill Clinton's November Surprise, just before the election day so as to not allow time to brief the poll workers of the voter fraud authorized by the then ... sitting President of the United States, the Liar-In-Chief.

[Shryke]

To what end? Do you think they would do this without provocation? If they do, they know what the repercussions would be. It ain't pretty.

Oh. Terrorists are rational now? The same people that are happy to kill themselves, wives, and families, to kill US, are now, thanks to our dialogue, worried about consequences?

Why don't think about what I said "via terrorist", as in, they give AQ a nuke to attack us with. Now, how exactly do we prosecute that? If we can't "prove" that Syria gave them the weapon?

[calcowgirl]

I was speaking of the *countries* you mentioned (Iran, Syria, or N. Korea), not the terrorists.

I’m tired of your twisting my words... have other things to do.

Carry on!

[Yosemitest]

When the GOP or McCain ask for money to support McCain, print and send them one of these.

[calcowgirl]

Thanks for posting that—it is a good restatement of history that negates the many posts around here trying to assert that the ‘gang of 14’ was a good thing. You should think about posting it on one of the scotus threads:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2012562/posts

[Yosemitest]

Done!

[lexusppd]

Everything in the article is pure speculation on what McCain would do as president. It is a FACT however that he DID vote to seat Scalia as well as Alito and Roberts. You really can't get much more Conservative then Scalia. Besides that isn't it more important to have a Justice who decides cases based on the law? That's what they are supposed to do. McCain has said he will appoint those type rather then any he believes will create law. I wouldn't want ANY Justice seated who makes law from the bench even if it is a Conservative one.

Anyway vote for whomever you'd like, it's America and that's what makes it so wonderful a Nation to live in. Many like you don't believe the WOT is important enough an issue and that is your right but at least you are going to vote unlike many here who have said they will simply stay home.

BTW, suppose McCain picks as a VP a man of the caliber of a Ronald Reagan (if there is such a man). Would you then reconsider voting for McCain?

[lexusppd]

Why did you vote for Reagan after he raised taxes?

[lexusppd]

I said: “independents vote pretty much in the same ratio as the D/R ratio”.

Are you familiar with the mathematical concept of “ratio”?

For you to say the demographics, politically are the same in Ca as they are in the nation ...

There you go again. I didn't say that.

With respect to California, I said: “the demographics as to party are not much different than they were in the Reagan gubernatorial era”

**********************************************************

It is you in fact who is throwing out meaningless blather. WE are talking here of a NATIONAL ELECTION. The bottom line is you are trying to compare California political demographics to national demographics and that is not possible under any set of circumstances or scenarios.

McCain will be the president as it looks right now. If that makes you angry then fine. But pulling useless stats from 30 years ago to make a point regarding an election that is like none we have ever faced in our history is lame. many here including, I guess yourself, do not believe the WOT is as important as do I and seem also to believe if either of the other 2 were elected somehow things would work out in that regard.

I believe thinking such as yours is purely disastrous and question the thought processes of anyone who thinks NOW, TODAY illegal immigration is more important then STAYING ALIVE.

[bmwcyle]

Bowing to La Raza (communist) does not make him conservative.

[ksen]

Now is not that time.

Hmmm, it never seems to be the time.

Meh, I'm not voting for anyone on the Left even if they have an "R" by their name. If the voters want to take the country to the Left, they can do it without my help.

As of right now I'll be voting Libertarian for President, and conservatives downticket where they are available.

After voting for GWB twice and getting the largest increase in federal power since at least LBJ I'll pass on voting for another 4 years of the same.

If you think 11th century goatherders pose more of a threat to our way of life than an out of control federal government then you have your priorities screwed up.

Scared voters are pliable voters, the parties are pleased to have their Islamic boogeyman to keep them in power.

[lexusppd]

"If you think 11th century goatherders pose more of a threat to our way of life than an out of control federal government then you have your priorities screwed up."

Eleventh century goat herders, no, but 11th century goat herders had no nukes. I find it sad so many fail in extrapolating from todays events to what seems an obvious conclusion if these crazies are not stopped NOW.

In any case at least you seem as if you will vote in the election and that is a good thing. To not vote means to give up any credibility in anything you say after the election.

[Yosemitest]

"suppose McCain picks as a VP a man of the caliber of a Ronald Reagan
(if there is such a man).
Would you then reconsider voting for McCain?"

Hello ... It's McCain!!!

Would you believe him about anything after all the backstabbing he's done? HELL NO!!!

[lexusppd]

Fine, but IF he did would you vote for him. Just yes or no will do.

[ksen]

McCain is light years better then the alternative and in this time he is the best electable choice we have.

That's the problem right there. You are too worried about "electable" candidates. Why not just vote for the best candidate and let the electability issues work themselves out?

By declaring certain candidates "unelectable" you are setting in motion a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[calcowgirl]

It is you in fact who is throwing out meaningless blather. WE are talking here of a NATIONAL ELECTION. The bottom line is you are trying to compare California political demographics to national demographics and that is not possible under any set of circumstances or scenarios.

NO! My comparison was of Schwarzenegger to McCain. What Arnold, as a liberal Republican Governor in California, has achieved for the liberal agenda is indicative of what McCain will do on a national scale, IMO. Get it?

McCain will be the president as it looks right now. If that makes you angry then fine. But pulling useless stats from 30 years ago to make a point regarding an election that is like none we have ever faced in our history is lame. many here including, I guess yourself, do not believe the WOT is as important as do I and seem also to believe if either of the other 2 were elected somehow things would work out in that regard.

I didn't pull stats to make a point--I pulled the stats only to refute your silly assertion that Arnold had "to satisfy mostly all liberals" in order to win.

I believe thinking such as yours is purely disastrous and question the thought processes of anyone who thinks NOW, TODAY illegal immigration is more important then STAYING ALIVE.

Ahhh... but there is the flaw. I didn't say the illegal immigration is more important than staying alive. It is you that infers if we don't elect McCain, we will all be dead. I simply don't agree with that. I believe claims such as yours are largely alarmist tactics employed by campaign hacks.