Posted on 02/03/2010 9:45:50 PM PST by Still Thinking
In 2000, Senator John McCain asked me to campaign on his behalf for president. I was honored to do so. I remember traveling to South Carolina to act as a one-man truth squad and doing countless television interviews for John. It was a tremendous experience and, as we all know, John came up short. But as always, he fought hard for what he thought was right.
But the John McCain I supported for president in 2000 is not the same John McCain I’ve watched frustrate conservatives time and again as our senator. He still fights hard, all right, but too often for the wrong causes.
It is said that all good humor has a grain of truth in it. So when John McCain jokingly referred to the media as “my base,” we all laughed because we knew how true it was. But the media doesn’t need another senator – Arizona does. And Arizonans want a senator who will listen to them all the time, not just when there’s an election. So I will soon formally announce that I will challenge John McCain in the Republican primary for senator.
I have the utmost respect and admiration for what John McCain has given to our country over the years. And this election will be about serious policy differences, not personalities. Let me begin by detailing where I think John McCain has gone wrong. For starters, John:
* Voted against the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 (which I helped write), echoing liberal Democratic arguments that they were tax cuts for the rich;* Voted for an $850 billion bailout for banks and car companies, which was loaded with special interest earmarks totaling $150 billion;
* Proposed spending $300 billion to buy up every bad mortgage in America, which National Review called a “full bailout for lenders” (McCain said he got the idea from Hillary Clinton!);
* Supports a cap and trade scheme that the Wall Street Journal called “an expensive, invasive government bureaucracy” - indeed, McCain once proclaimed, “I don’t know how any conservative cannot support cap and trade;”
* Wrote the campaign finance law just struck down by the Supreme Court that denied free speech rights to groups like the National Rifle Association while carving out an exception for media corporations like the New York Times;
* Opposes drilling in ANWR;
* Opposes the use of the enhanced interrogation techniques that we know prevented at least 4 major terrorist attacks; and
* Helped write an amnesty plan that would let illegal aliens qualify for Social Security and Medicare, and which the Heritage Foundation estimates would cost taxpayers “at least $2.6 trillion.”
This is not the record of a true conservative, much less a fiscal conservative.
Yet John is trying to make the case that somehow I am not a real conservative, especially when it comes to spending. It is absurd. Aside from my 98% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union (McCain’s rating: 81%), I have a lifetime rating from Citizens Against Government Waste of 89%. John McCain’s? 88%.
Of course, John has a reputation for independence. A healthy dose of independence is a good thing and I’ve never been afraid to buck my party’s leadership when they were wrong – my strong opposition to the Bush/McCain amnesty plan being a prime example. John McCain’s problem is that he has grown independent from those he’s supposed to represent and the conservative values he now claims to champion.
We have serious issues to address over the next six years – taxes, cap and trade, energy, illegal immigration, and spending. For the last six years, John McCain has too often been on the wrong side of them. What makes anyone think the next six years would be different?
As for me, I’m well aware of my personal shortcomings. Hard to believe, but some folks think I talk too much! Well, as a radio talk show host, it was my job to talk. But as the next senator from Arizona, it will be my job to listen.
John McCain is a national treasure – but he has become too enamored of the Washington way of doing things.
Scores of Arizona conservatives have urged me to mount this challenge to bring back reliable conservative representation in the United States Senate, as a Senator for Arizona…not simply from Arizona. That call will be answered; the challenge will be mounted; and Arizona Republicans will have a clear choice in the August 24 primary.
I’ll have more to say in the coming days and weeks. In the meantime, I encourage everyone at RedState to visit my website at www.jdhayworth2010.com and follow me on Twitter
NO amnesty means NO McCain!
Go JD!
Here’s a link to his Facebook page.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=107797595082&ref=ts#!/group.php?v=info&ref=ts&gid=107797595082
Here’s a link to his web page.
I love it! I almost chose that one myself.
Go JD!!
McCain was “independent” enough to be considered for running mate to John Kerry in 2004. His campaign finance reform aimed at and succeeded in harming the Party’s efforts to raise money for Bush’s re-election. I think he did it out of revenge.
Exactly. He’s an aisle reaching, ankle grabbing, Constitution shredding RINO asshat, mavericky enough to buck anybody conservative — especially his constituents.
Heading to bed. Night, all. I’ll check back in tomorrow morning.
Go J.D.!
Besides John McCain’s problems of granting amnesty to illegal aliens and restricting freedom of speech, he is severely deficient in the areas of national security and integrity.
Politics is the art of compromise and leadership is the art of principle. Lincoln used superb political skills to implement some of the most cogent and insightful principles to guide this nation. McCain has used political skills to implement compromises consistent with increasing personal acclaim among liberal media and politicians. The former is dead and the latter is alive, but dead to principles unrelated to his immediate personal advancement.
John McCain lacks leadership for the War on Terror. His leadership codified the Army interrogation manual making terrorists legal combatants. His leadership granted terrorists American citizenship rights under Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. He thereby ensures information vital to defeat terrorists remains sacred and unobtainable. Terrorists are unresponsive to direct questioning and psychological gambits. Therefore, interrogators need all stress and coercion techniques our military encounters in survival schools. McCain embraces liberal orthodoxy considering those methods torture, but his searing experiences call forth contrary insights he must suppress.
McCain especially understands from the Geneva Conventions terrorists are not insurgents or freedom fighters; when captured, certainly not prisoners of war. They are not armed forces, militias, or volunteer corps of any country or authority. These killers are not members of organized resistance movements carrying arms openly. They have no distinctive identifier. Terrorists cannot even qualify as spies or saboteurs destroying infrastructure required to support military operations.
McCain understands Geneva Conventions intended to isolate such forces, provide them no protections, and allow destruction with any overwhelming furies needed to crush their abominations. Knowing these factors he promised to close Guantanamo Bay, inviting terrorists into our legal system. He decided to accommodate extraordinarily savage behavior, which checkmates national laws intended to manage simple murder and kidnapping, and renders Posse Comitatus a crumbling deception.
McCain especially appreciates from our Constitution that laws guaranteeing civil liberties presuppose operation within an invincible society. He more than most understands Alexander Hamilton’s words that devastating, unforeseeable perils must lead deliberations. The Federal government’s three branches primary responsibility is to pursue Hamilton’s admonition that powers exist without limitation; providing capabilities thwarting dangers as well as repelling attacks. McCain understands powerful warfare capabilities require potent intelligence acquisition and exploitation before and throughout campaigns.
The framers of our Constitution and the Geneva Conventions held powerful positions throughout the darkest times of our country and the world. They were our Founding Fathers, and parents and grandparents of the Greatest Generation. Their words expressed durable morality earned in our fight for freedom, and against the ultimate bloody deluge of the 20th century. These first generations expressed principles derived from confronting shattering tragedies, and earning peace through victory.
John McCain’s actions are particularly reprehensible because he turns a blind eye to the council of these people. McCain continually seeks popular advancement by placating those coveting luxurious, asymmetrical morality requiring shelter from perilous choices and danger awareness. His crime is repudiating military and intelligence professionals facing hard choices when confronting shrewd, ruthless enemies obscured behind frightening uncertainties.
Instead he follows the success of Bill Clinton, who cemented in politics for both parties the idea that character did not matter. There are no principles, but only ideas that secure possession of an office. John McCain is the most prominent Republican example of this new direction towards possession of power through careful exploitation of perceived expediency.
John McCain succumbed to the terrible addiction of political power. The same addiction expressed itself differently in fellow Navy officer Randy Cunningham, who was the Navy’s first Vietnam ace. Over the decades the honor and moral authority of both were gradually traded away for influence in the political arena.
To me McCain is like a cadaver prepared for viewing. The removal of blood and organs equates to the trading away of honor and moral authority. The reputation that remains is like the cosmetics applied for viewing the corpse at the funeral. It is easy for anyone to get onto the same sort of gently downward sloping path. The final result is tragic, but we should not suffer such pathetic and contemptible modern day Macbeths or Hamlets as Republicans in the Senate.
J.D. whipping McCain’s ass would be almost as good as Brown taking the so called Ted’s seat. Got to send this man a little bit of money.
The closest analogy I can find is piracy.
Very tough for Hayworth to beat McCain. Unless anti-incumbent fever is really intense.
I’ll be contributing and I don’t even live there.
Retiring McCain is a national priority for conservatives.
I'm so tired of this guy, He is not a team player. I love Sarah Palin, but she is making a big mistake backing him. One of the reason she was such a great politician last year was McCain was so bad.
JD should do what Brown did with people making call for him out of state something McCain could not get many people to do.
It would be better because it's always better to get rid of a traitor to your cause.
Your enemies are easier to deal with because you know what they will do. With a traitor like McCain, you never know if you'll be able to depend on him when it really counts.
I hope he WINS.
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