mccain

(Via msnbc.com.)

The independent label sticks to John McCain because he antagonizes fellow Republicans and likes to work with Democrats.

But a different label applies to his actual record: conservative.

The likely Republican presidential nominee is much more conservative than voters appear to realize. McCain leans to the right on issue after issue, not just on the Iraq war but also on abortion, gay rights, gun control and other issues that matter to his party’s social conservatives.

The four-term Arizona senator, a longtime member of the Armed Services Committee, criticized the earlier handling of the war but has been a crucial ally in President Bush’s effort to increase and maintain U.S. forces in Iraq.

Besides the war, McCain agrees broadly with Bush and other conservatives on:

Abortion.

McCain promises to appoint judges who, in the mold of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, are likely to limit the reach of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. McCain’s record is not spotless on abortion: He said once, in 1999, that Roe v. Wade should not be overturned. But that amounted to a blip in an otherwise unbroken record of opposing abortion rights for women.

“I am pro-life and an advocate for the rights of man everywhere in the world,” McCain told the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. “Because to be denied liberty is an offense to nature and nature’s Creator.”

Gay rights.

McCain opposes gay marriage. True, he does not support a federal ban on gay marriage on grounds the issue traditionally has been decided by states. But McCain worked to ban gay marriage in Arizona. He also supports the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and he opposed legislation to protect gay people from job discrimination or hate crimes.

“I’m proud to have led an effort in my home state to change our state constitution and to protect the sanctity of marriage as between a man and woman,” he told CNN in March. “I will continue to advocate for those fundamental principals of our party and our faith.”

Gun control.

McCain voted against a ban on assault-style weapons and for shielding gun-makers and dealers from civil suits. He did vote in favor of requiring background checks at gun shows, but in general he sides with the National Rifle Association in favor of gun rights.

When the Supreme Court held arguments last month on Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban, McCain said it was “a landmark case for all Americans who believe, as I do, that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.”

Full story here.

(Via Crooks and Liars.)

Just a couple of months ago, John McCain acknowledged, “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” For some reason, he’s been trying to prove this point ever since.

Yesterday, for example, McCain made a campaign stop at an investment firm in Westport, Conn., where a voter asked how McCain plans to balance the federal budget. (McCain has vowed, repeatedly, to eliminate the deficit by the end of his first term in office.)

“Basically, which is it?” the man asked Mr. McCain. “Straight talk: Do you want to raise taxes, cut entitlement spending, cut defense spending, or have a deficit?”

Mr. McCain did not explain how he plans to balance the budget, but spoke generally about hoping to stimulate the economy — and cited President Reagan.

“I don’t believe in a static economy,” Mr. McCain said. “I believe that when there’s stimulus for growth, when there’s opportunity, when people keep more of their money — and the government is the least efficient way to spend your money — that economies improve.”

“When Ronald Reagan came to office,” he said, noting that few in the audience were old enough to remember, “we had 10 percent unemployment, 20 percent interest rates, and 10 percent inflation, if I’ve got those numbers right. That was when Ronald Reagan came to office in 1980. And so what did we do? We didn’t raise taxes, and we didn’t cut entitlements. What we did was we cut taxes and we put in governmental reductions in regulations, stimulus to the economy….”

There’s so much wrong with this, it’s hard to know where to start.

First, citing Reagan as a model for deficit reduction is remarkably foolish. The deficit tripled under Reagan, and at the time, his deficits were the largest in American history. If he’s McCain’s standard for responsible budgeting, we’re in trouble.

Second, McCain hails Reagan’s example for not raising taxes, but this overlooks a key detail — Reagan did raise taxes, several times, to prevent his budget deficits from spiraling out of control and making the national debt even worse. Is McCain prepared to follow Reagan’s lead on this or not? (McCain did take a no-new-taxes pledge on national television a few weeks ago, though he has since said he may not have meant it.)

Third, McCain’s tax plan costs more than $2 trillion, on top of the $400 billion deficits he would inherit from Bush, and yet he still claims he will balance the budget in four years.

And fourth, McCain concluded, “I believe we can grow this economy, and reduce this deficit.” This is so utterly foolish, it’s hard to believe a serious presidential candidate would be willing to say it out loud.

In just the past couple of months, McCain has been confused about the relationship between taxes and revenues, confused about whether he thinks our current economy is strong or not, confused about why interest rates even exist, confused about his own no-new-taxes pledge, confused about his own Social Security policy, and confused about how he’d pay for yet another round of reckless tax cuts.

After a quarter-century in Congress, when it comes to the economy, the poor guy sounds like he has no idea what he’s talking about.

Maybe the senator could take a few weeks off, read a book or two, and get back to us?

(Via LA Times.)

Facing an outcry from Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain, Barack Obama expressed regret Saturday for saying that small-town Americans embittered by job losses cling to religion, guns and hostility toward immigrants to explain their frustrations.

Obama’s move underscored the political damage wrought by his remark last weekend at a San Francisco fundraiser. Clinton, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, made it the focus of her campaign Saturday.

Trying to drive a wedge between Obama and working-class Democrats in states with upcoming primaries, Clinton’s campaign also deployed an army of surrogates to echo her condemnation of the Illinois senator. Among them were the mayors of Scranton, Bethlehem and several other cities in Pennsylvania, where the Democratic contest is nine days away.

Campaigning in Indiana, Clinton said she “was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Sen. Obama made about people in small-town America.”

“Sen. Obama’s remarks are elitist and they are out of touch,” she told a crowd in Indianapolis.

Full story here.

(Via Crooks and Liars.)

About two weeks ago, John McCain, in a high-profile speech, unveiled his response to the mortgage crisis. Despite the seriousness of the issue, the GOP presidential nominee unveiled a classic YOYO policy: “You’re on your own.”

As the New York Times noted shortly after the speech, “The real core of his speech was his argument against government action to help dig distressed homeowners — or the country — out of the mortgage mess…. His suggestion that federal aid might wrongly reward ‘undeserving’ homeowners sounded both mean-spirited and economically naive. And then there is the double standard. He seemed less concerned about the government helping reckless bankers, endorsing its role in preventing the bankruptcy of Bear Stearns.”

Yesterday, in one of the quicker flip-flops in recent memory, McCain reversed course. The Washington Post, apparently anxious to give McCain a hand, said the senator was “refining” and “revising” his plan. That’s enormously generous of the newspaper, but in reality, McCain’s proposal was an embarrassing dud, so he gave up on it.

Senator John McCain, who drew criticism last month after he warned against broad government intervention to solve the deepening mortgage crisis, pivoted Thursday and called for the federal government to aid some homeowners in danger of losing their homes, by helping them to refinance and get federally guaranteed 30-year mortgages.

“There is nothing more important than keeping alive the American dream to own your home, and priority No. 1 is to keep well-meaning, deserving homeowners who are facing foreclosure in their homes,” Mr. McCain said in a speech on economic themes that he gave at a window company in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn.

Funny, two weeks ago he thought these same homeowners shouldn’t be “rewarded” for acting “irresponsibly.”

Perhaps the nation’s callous constituency is not quite as large as the McCain campaign had hoped.

(Via Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire.)

John Heilemann: “That Mitt Romney wishes to occupy the VP slot on the Republican ticket with John McCain comes as no surprise — but the blatantness of his campaign is highly amusing. As a general rule, the way one goes about these things is to be more or less subtle. You hint. You nudge. You get your pals to lobby quietly, behind the scenes. What you don’t do, for heaven’s sake, is just come out and ask. But basically this is what Romney has done — or, rather, is doing.”

(Via AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth.)

Let’s just say America isn’t very impressed with Republican economics. Surely the public will be impressed with McCain’s lack of understanding on all economic matters except “reading Greenspan’s book”, “more tax cuts and less regulation” and of course, the Keating Five. What a record…please run with that and let us know how it all works out.

(Via LA Times.)

Amid widespread concerns about the nation’s mortgage crisis, John McCain outlined Thursday a proposal to help “well-meaning, deserving homeowners who are facing foreclosure” and called for a Justice Department investigation into possible “criminal wrongdoing” by unscrupulous lenders.

The proposals marked a shift in tone from McCain’s admonition two weeks ago against adopting a mortgage plan that would be “a multibillion-dollar bailout for big banks and speculators.” That set the Arizona senator apart from his Democratic rivals in the presidential contest, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, who have both said there is a need for government intervention to fight the nation’s wave of home mortgage foreclosures and overall economic slowdown.

Related Stories
- Senate passes mortgage relief bill
- White House swayed on mortgage aid
- Q & A: How does WaMu’s financial state affect you?
- Greenspan won’t take rap for housing meltdown
- Who should get mortgage aid?

McCain, in a campaign stop at a windows business in Brooklyn, said, “There is nothing more important than keeping alive the American dream to own your home, and priority No. 1 is to keep well-meaning, deserving homeowners who are facing foreclosure in their homes.”

In advance of his plan to spell out more details about his economic proposals next week, McCain also cited rising gas prices and other hardships for small-business owners and their employees.

“Today our economy is weakening, and as I travel this country and meet and talk with people, I can see how things are getting tougher for many Americans,” he said before sitting down with half a dozen small-business owners to hear their concerns.

Full story here.

Tags: mccain, mortgages, housing crisis

(Via msnbc.com.)

Senator John McCain has long made his decades of experience in foreign policy and national security the centerpiece of his political identity, and suggests he would bring to the White House a fully formed view of the world.

But now one component of the fractious Republican Party foreign policy establishment — the so-called pragmatists, some of whom have come to view the Iraq war or its execution as a mistake — is expressing concern that Mr. McCain might be coming under increased influence from a competing camp, the neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush’s first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war.

The concerns have emerged in the weeks since Mr. McCain became his party’s presumptive nominee and began more formally assembling a list of foreign policy advisers. Among those on the list are several prominent neoconservatives, including Robert Kagan, an author who helped write much of the foreign policy speech that Mr. McCain delivered in Los Angeles on March 26, in which he described himself as “a realistic idealist.” Others include the security analyst Max Boot and a former United Nations ambassador, John R. Bolton.

Full story here.

Technorati Tags: mccain, foreign policy, campaign 2008, republicans, neoconservatives

(Via MSNBC.com: Politics.)

McCain wants to have a fight in November that centers around character and patriotism, but this might not be enough for voters who are looking for a break from the campaign rhetoric of the past eight years.

(Via AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth.)

John McCain, the one-time champion of campaign finance reform, is a campaign finance criminal. He scammed the public financing system last year, but the scam backfired because McCain is stuck in it now according to the Federal Elections Commission. And, McCain has busted the public finance system spending cap, which is a criminal offense.

There is absolutely no way Barack Obama should get entangled in any sort of campaign finance agreement with McCain. No way. McCain has shown he can’t be trusted. Jake Tapper reported last night that Obama is thinking differently about the way money is raised for the general election:

“We have created a parallel public financing system where the American people decide if they want to support a campaign they can get on the Internet and finance it, and they will have as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign that has traditionally been reserved for the wealthy and the powerful,” Obama said.

Good. Obama is right. He has changed the way money is raised for campaigns. But, above and beyond that, McCain’s law-breaking is an absolute game-changer.

Now, the traditional media being the McCain sycophants that they are, will try to make it seem like Obama owes it to McCain to enter the public campaign finance system. Meanwhile, the traditional media, being the McCain sycophants that they are, will continue to ignore McCain’s campaign finance illegalities.

Obama doesn’t owe McCain a thing. McCain can’t be trusted on this issue. And, that should end the discussion. If McCain wants the campaign to be about campaign finance, so be it. McCain is the scammer and the criminal.