I generally try to stay away from politics on the blog (except for humour), but I have a bad case of electile dysfunction. The more I look at McCain, the less I want to see him as a presidential candidate. I was sorry to see Fred and Rudy drop out. Hillary is just too shrill and flip flops as much as McCain and Kerry. Obama seems sincere, but he seems a bit too naive. None of the candidates resonate with me, I would have liked to see Lieberman run. He’s the type of politician I like, state your position and stick with it, if you need to change a view, have a cogent reason for switching and explain it intelligently. Too many politicians suffer from some form of long term memory deficiency, they only remember what they’ve said recently. I may not agree with everything Bush has done, but I have to respect the fact that he had the balls to stick to his vision, whatever it happened to be.
In this piece, Ann Coulter tears McCain apart. She’s always at her best in her writing, if she refrained from public speaking, people would take her more seriously.
h/t Ace
“Straight Talk” Takes Scenic Route to the Truth
John McCain is Bob Dole minus the charm, conservatism and youth. Like McCain, pollsters assured us that Dole was the most “electable” Republican. Unlike McCain, Dole didn’t lie all the time while claiming to engage in Straight Talk.
Of course, I might lie constantly too, if I were seeking the Republican presidential nomination after enthusiastically promoting amnesty for illegal aliens, Social Security credit for illegal aliens, criminal trials for terrorists, stem-cell research on human embryos, crackpot global warming legislation and free speech-crushing campaign-finance laws.
I might lie too, if I had opposed the Bush tax cuts, a marriage amendment to the Constitution, waterboarding terrorists and drilling in Alaska.
And I might lie if I had called the ads of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth “dishonest and dishonorable.”
McCain angrily denounces the suggestion that his “comprehensive immigration reform” constituted “amnesty” — on the ludicrous grounds that it included a small fine. Even the guy who graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at the U.S. Naval Academy didn’t fall for this a few years ago.
In 2003, McCain told The Tucson Citizen that “amnesty has to be an important part” of any immigration reform. He also rolled out the old chestnut about America’s need for illegals, who do “jobs that American workers simply won’t do.”
McCain’s amnesty bill would have immediately granted millions of newly legalized immigrants Social Security benefits. He even supported allowing work performed as an illegal to count toward Social Security benefits as recently as a vote in 2006 — now adamantly denied by Mr. Straight Talk.
McCain keeps boasting that he was “the only one” of the Republican presidential candidates who supported the surge in Iraq.
What is he talking about? All Republicans supported the surge — including Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. The only ones who didn’t support it were McCain pals like Sen. Chuck Hagel. Indeed, the surge is the first part of the war on terrorism that caused McCain to break from Hagel in order to support the president.
True, McCain voted for the war. So did Hillary Clinton. Like her, he then immediately started attacking every other aspect of the war on terrorism. (The only difference was, he threw in frequent references to his experience as a POW, which currently outnumber John Kerry’s references to being a Vietnam vet.)
Thus, McCain joined with the Democrats in demanding O.J. trials for terrorists at Guantanamo, including his demand that the terrorists have full access to the intelligence files being used to prosecute them.
…
Though McCain was far from the only Republican to support the surge, he does have the distinction of being the only Republican who voted against the Bush tax cuts. (Also the little lamented Sen. Lincoln Chafee, who later left the Republican Party.) Now McCain claims he opposed the tax cuts because they didn’t include enough spending cuts. But that wasn’t what he said at the time.
To the contrary, in 2001, McCain said he was voting against Bush’s tax cuts based on the idiotic talking point of the Democrats. “I cannot in good conscience,” McCain said, “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.”
…
Though McCain generally votes pro-life — as his Arizona constituency requires — he embraces the loony lingo of the pro-abortion set, repeatedly assuring his pals in the media that he opposes the repeal of Roe v. Wade because it would force women to undergo “illegal and dangerous operations.”
Come to think of it, Dole is a million times better than McCain. Why not run him again?
Howdy!
Apropos of Nothing 