I have an admission to make: back in 2000, I actually supported John McCain. I voted for him in Virginia's Republican Presidential primary (no party registration in the Commonwealth) and even gave him a small donation. I liked his "straight talk express" and his independence from the right-wing Republican Party. As we know, McCain's candidacy was crushed in South Carolina, in part by a shadowy smear campaign which used "push polls" and made allusions to McCain's sanity, sexuality, and supposed "illegitimate black child." In truth, McCain and his wife have an adopted Bangladeshi-born daughter, but that didn't stop the friends of Bush from using those tactics. Anyway, I've generally liked McCain since 2000. But, sad to say, those days are over. Here's Paul Krugman from today's New York Times on John McCain, 2006:
It's time for some straight talk about John McCain. He isn't a moderate. He's much less of a maverick than you'd think. And he isn't the straight talker he claims to be.Mr. McCain's reputation as a moderate may be based on his former opposition to the Bush tax cuts. In 2001 he declared, "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us."
But now ? at a time of huge budget deficits and an expensive war, when the case against tax cuts for the rich is even stronger ? Mr. McCain is happy to shower benefits on the most fortunate. He recently voted to extend tax cuts on dividends and capital gains, an action that will worsen the budget deficit while mainly benefiting people with very high incomes.
Wonderful. But it gets worse.
The bottom line is that Mr. McCain isn't a moderate; he's a man of the hard right. How far right? A statistical analysis of Mr. McCain's recent voting record, available at www.voteview.com, ranks him as the Senate's third most conservative member.What about Mr. McCain's reputation as a maverick? This comes from the fact that every now and then he seems to declare his independence from the Bush administration, as he did in pushing through his anti-torture bill.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Guant?namo. President Bush, when signing the bill, appended a statement that in effect said that he was free to disregard the law whenever he chose. Mr. McCain protested, but there are apparently no hard feelings: at the recent Southern Republican Leadership Conference he effusively praised Mr. Bush.
Looks like McCain has sold his soul in order to be President. How depressing. So here's the bottom line on McCain, according to Paul Krugman:
He isn't a straight talker. His flip-flopping on tax cuts, his call to send troops we don't have to Iraq and his endorsement of the South Dakota anti-abortion legislation even while claiming that he would find a way around that legislation's central provision show that he's a politician as slippery and evasive as, well, George W. Bush.He isn't a moderate. Mr. McCain's policy positions and Senate votes don't just place him at the right end of America's political spectrum; they place him in the right wing of the Republican Party.
And he isn't a maverick, at least not when it counts. When the cameras are rolling, Mr. McCain can sometimes be seen striking a brave pose of opposition to the White House. But when it matters, when the Bush administration's ability to do whatever it wants is at stake, Mr. McCain always toes the party line.
So much for John McCain as the Last Great Republican moderate. This party has been totally taken over by the hard right, leaving only one "moderate" party in America - the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, both the Republican and Democratic parties have become largely servants of rich corporations, special interest groups, and fat cat lobbyists. Which is why we're drawn to "different kinds of politiicans" like John McCain. Or was McCain never as "different" as he seemed in the first place?