The Political Inquirer

During the summer everyone thought John McCain was dead and buried, especially after a failed immigration reform bill supported by George Bush, and many liberal Democrats, which would’ve given a path to citizenship for the 12-20 million illegal immigrants in the country. McCain pulled out of the August straw poll in Iowa out of fear of losing badly, and Mitt Romney ended up winning. Many McCain staffers also left and his entire organization seemed to be in bad shape.

Then something bizarre happened. John McCain became the flavor of the month in a race that has had many. Voters turned out in large numbers for McCain, even though he holds many views that directly contradict their own. A surprising 42% of McCain voters according to an exit poll opposed the Iraq war, but then voted for the king of the Iraq surge.

First it was Mitt Romney, who people drifted towards because he wasn’t Rudy Giuliani. Then when everyone found out the religious wonders of Mike Huckabee, he won the Iowa caucus and suddenly became a national frontrunner to win the nomination. I’m beginning to wonder when this cycle of idiocy will end, but hopefully it will make one more stop after McCain. And hopefully it will be someone who actually is worthy of the Republican nomination.

Immigration

John McCain is a liberal on many issues. When looking at his record it is almost horrifying to see what he has engaged in over the years. First and most well known is the McCain/Kennedy immigration reform, supported by liberal Democrats and compassionate conservatives. Do I respect McCain for going against his party to try and do things he thinks is right? Not in this case. Over 70% of the American people didn’t want the bill to pass, Congress actually had to shut off their phone lines the day the voting occurred because so many people were calling in.

Here are some numbers from 2006 and 2007:

• 89% of Americans think illegal immigration into the U.S. is a problem (30% “extremely serious,” 33% “very serious,” and 26% “somewhat serious.” (Time Magazine, Jan. 2006)
• 82% think that not enough is being done along the borders to keep illegal immigrants from crossing into the country. (New York Times/CBS May 2007)
• 68% feel that the number of immigrants who cross the border, whether legal or illegal is “too high”. (Polling Company, Sept. 2006)
• 62% oppose making it easier for illegal immigrants to become citizens of America. (Quinnipiac Univ., Feb. 2006)

And some more, Governor Huckabee and Governor Spitzer take notice of the bottom two numbers:

“I defend with no reservation our proposal to offer the people who harvest our crops, tend our gardens, work in our restaurants, care for our children and clean our homes a chance to be legal citizens of this country.” - John McCain

“McCain-Kennedy, what it did is said that people who are here illegally get a special pathway … And my fear is that McCain-Kennedy would do to immigration what McCain-Feingold has done to campaign finance and money in politics, and that’s bad.” - Mitt Romney

Do you think John McCain had a sudden change of heart in regard to immigration? He hasn’t, and if a Democratic Congress put an amnesty bill in front of a President McCain, I have no doubts that he would sign it. Looking at polls, he knew he would need to win over conservatives on immigration, and I am amazed it is working. Here is a quote from a McCain strategist:

“We knew it would be a minefield, but boy howdy, We might have been overly optimistic that we could tiptoe our way through it.”

He was recently boo’ed over his immigration policy at a Michigan campaign stop. The good people of the state were smart enough not to pick him (70% of them at least). To end this topic, a debate answer about his own state:

“I know how to secure the borders. I come from a border state where our borders are broken. More people come across our border illegally each year than any other state.”

Taxation

The next subject is tax cuts, or more specifically, the Bush tax cuts. McCain put forth a Democrat style critique (one similar to Huckabee’s assertion) about these tax cuts, when he said in 2001:

“I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief.”

A journalist noted:

“He voted against tax cuts in 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2005, and this year he’s for the tax cuts in the reconciliation bill. It looks like he did it for political reasons.”

Just like on the immigration issue, McCain must have realized that in order to win a Republican nomination, he might have to start being a Republican and not whatever the heck he’s been the last decade. It seems he has turned around and decided to support making the tax cuts final, no longer caring about who benefits more. McCain will stop at absolutely nothing to get the GOP nomination.

The Club for Growth had a less than stellar discussion in their sections on McCain, stating:

Third, Senator McCain not only voted against the Bush tax cuts, he joined leading liberal senators in offering and voting for amendments designed to undermine them. All in all, Senator McCain voted on the pro-tax side of 14 such amendments in 2001 and 2003. These included such odious measures as:

• An amendment sponsored by Senator John D. Rockefeller (D-WV) to prohibit a reduction in the top tax rate until Congress enacted legislation to provide a prescription drug benefit^.
• An amendment sponsored by Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) against full repeal of the Death Tax. This vote is in keeping with Senator McCain’s 2002 vote against repealing the Death Tax^.
• An amendment sponsored by Tom Daschle (D-SD) and co-sponsored by Senator McCain to limit tax reduction in the top tax bracket to one percentage point.

They go on to say:

Finally, John McCain recently claimed that he has never voted for a tax increase, but the congressional record tells a different story. As Chairman of the Commerce Committee in 1998, he sponsored and voted for an enormous 282% tax increase on cigarettes. Senator McCain defended the proposal as a “fee” rather than a tax increase, but his semantic tap dance doesn’t change the numerical facts.

Despite his occasional constructive votes on tax policy, Senator McCain’s vigorous opposition to and misguided rhetoric against the most pro-growth tax cuts in twenty years should make economic conservatives very worried about the tax policies that would emanate from a McCain presidential administration.

A major tax hike on cigarettes? He is really starting to sound like Huckabee on economic issues.

Campaign Finance Reform

A wide variety of people believe that McCain-Feingold was a mistake, and it is, there is no doubt about it. Just another bad mark in John McCain’s record. Here are some critiques of this legislation:

Something almost without precedent in America will happen Thursday. That’s the day when McCain-Feingold — aka the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 — will officially silence broadcast advertising that contains criticism of members of Congress seeking re-election in November. Before 2006, American election campaigns traditionally began in earnest after Labor Day. Unless McCain-Feingold is repealed, Labor Day will henceforth mark the point in the campaign when congressional incumbents can sit back and cruise, free of those pesky negative TV and radio spots. It is the most effective incumbent protection act possible, short of abolishing the elections themselves.

How can this possibly be, you ask? McCain-Feingold — named after the law’s main advocates, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis. — bans all broadcast political advocacy advertising that mentions candidates by name, beginning 60 days before the election. President Bush signed and the U.S. Supreme Court shockingly upheld McCain-Feingold three years ago. Earlier this week, the Federal Election Commission, decided against allowing an exemption to the ban that would have allowed some highly restricted advocacy ads by groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO.

Others: McCain-Feingold Five Years of Failure, George Will on the Hypocrisy of McCain-Feingold

A poor piece of legislation that helps protect incumbents.

Global Warming

Patrick Michaels, an author and Environmental Sciences professor at the University of Virginia had the unfortunate pleasure of attending a hearing led by McCain about man made global warming in Washington:

“John McCain, a Republican, has probably held the most biased hearing of all,” Michaels said. McCain is a big proponent of limiting greenhouse gas emissions, which he believes are causing “global warming.” The Arizona senator also “is trying to define himself as an environmental Republican, which he is going to use to differentiate himself from his rivals for the (presidential) nomination in 2008,” according to Michaels.

This guy also believes that the Clinton Administration held more balanced hearings that what he saw with John McCain. He has also called the Bush administrations views on climate “terribly disappointing.” And right on schedule, McCain injected global warming into some debate answers and campaign stops, to pull Independents and Democrats who are fueling his campaign for the Republican nomination (make sense of that one ..)

The Iraq War

John McCain is a blind fool when it comes to war and foreign policy. You can hear him drill on about the troops and the war on terror wherever he goes. He even interjects the troops into the immigration discussion. When receiving boo’s on his immigration policy he quickly turned the tables, saying that he wouldn’t want to call up a soldier in Iraq to tell them that their mother has been deported. Nice one John. He got applause for it too. Republicans are saps for shallow patriotism unfortunately, and McCain can sell it all day.

His latest gem was to claim that he would stay in Iraq for one hundred years, or more, if necessary. His basis for this? Well, we’ve been in Korea, Japan, and Germany for decades. So why not? McCain, and people like him, always say things like “you don’t care about the troops,” but if you really did care, you’d make sure they weren’t committed overseas for decades, spreading our military thin, and keeping them away from their families.

A Bad Choice

Take the worst aspects of the militaristic right, and the worst aspects of the Democratic Party, and you have John McCain. He’s found that many of his positions needed switching for this 2008 presidential run, because he hasn’t been supporting sensible policies, or ones the American people want. Being in a war does not make someone a good president. Being in Washington for decades while our countries borders and economic situation have fallen apart doesn’t say much either.

A quick look and you will see that John McCain isn’t much of a Republican at all. And those few non-Independent and non-Democrats who are voting for him now might have to find out the hard way that his positions will switch back once he’s achieved what he wanted.