Why John McCain should not be President (Part 5)
It’s been a while since I’ve done any political posts on McCain. To be honest, I’m getting to a point where I’m so burned out on even trying to get any reasonable research to post. The kind of research I was aiming to do takes a lot of time to collate and put together in a form that’s presentable on the web. We’re talking tons of material from The Library of Congress on both candidate’s Senate records and each candidates positions based on the material freely available on their websites. Frankly, I think anyone who wishes to have an educated opinion on each of these candidates really needs to get on these sites and take some time to really read up on them. For now though, I’ll keep my posts centered on very specific areas.
Last week, my wife forwarded me a post made on The Carpetbagger Report entitled
“Jukebox John changes his tune every few minutes“. Author Steven Benen talks about how McCain has not been very consistent with his position on different policies and lists 60 different issues McCain has flip-flopped on. It’s quite an extensive list but, to name a few, here’s some of the ones (and perhaps the most dangerous ones) that really stick out for me:
- McCain thought Bush’s warrantless-wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.
- McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Hamas. Now he believes the opposite.
- McCain said before the war in Iraq, “We will win this conflict. We will win it easily.” Four years later, McCain said he knew all along that the war in Iraq war was “probably going to be long and hard and tough.”
- McCain was against expanding the GI Bill before he was for it.
- McCain defended “privatizing” Social Security. Now he says he’s against privatization (though he actually still supports it.)
- McCain wanted to change the Republican Party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. Now he doesn’t.
- McCain’s first mortgage plan was premised on the notion that homeowners facing foreclosure shouldn’t be “rewarded” for acting “irresponsibly.” His second mortgage plan took largely the opposite position.
- McCain went from saying gay marriage should be allowed, to saying gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed.
- John McCain initially argued that economics is not an area of expertise for him, saying, “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues; I still need to be educated,” and “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” He now falsely denies ever having made these remarks and insists that he has a “very strong” understanding of economics.
- McCain said in 2005 that he opposed the tax cuts because they were “too tilted to the wealthy.” By 2007, he denied ever having said this, and falsely argued that he opposed the cuts because of increased government spending.
- McCain supported the Lieberman/Warner legislation to combat global warming. Now he doesn’t.
- On immigration policy in general, McCain announced in February 2008 that he would vote against his own bill.
- McCain went from saying he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade to saying the exact opposite.
- McCain supported his own lobbying-reform legislation from 1997. Now he doesn’t.
Be sure and visit the site and read the others. Links are provided to legitimate sources that cite each of these positions.
Sure, people change their minds everyday, but for one man to constantly go back and forth on so many issues, that’s more than just simply changing your mind. It would seem that McCain’s position changes if it suits him politically. But, unlike McCain, Obama has always seemed very consistent in his positions. And when he has changed his mind he’s always been pretty good at explaining why. Not so with McCain.
Keith Olbermann some weeks back on Countdown mentioned many of the same points:
This weekend, I plan on posting another blog entry as sort of a followup to this post. I think my main criticism of McCain is that McCain is not a good representative of the Republican Party. Hell, I don’t think even the Republican Party is a good body of representation for true Republicans and conservatives alike, much less McCain. This is what I’ll be targeting with my next post. I think once you read it you’ll clearly understand where my criticism of McCain is coming from and why I think it’s unwise for so many Republican’s to embrace him simply because he is a Republican.
More on that later…
