McCain — Delusional or Deceitful?

In this video, conservative Pat Robertson makes the case for what a McCain presidency would be like.

If McCain can’t lead Republicans, how can he lead the country, much less the world?

Two of the most prominent conservative Republican commentators are concerned enough about the competency of McCain’s campaign to write publicly of the matter, apparently hoping to get a message through before it’s too late.

Robert Novak:

Shortcomings by John McCain’s campaign in the art of politics are alienating two organizations of Christian conservatives. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family is estranged following the failure of Dobson and McCain to talk out their differences. Evangelicals who follow the Rev. John Hagee resent McCain’s disavowal of him.

The evangelicals are not an isolated problem for the Arizona senator. Enthusiasm for McCain inside the Republican coalition is in short supply. During the four months since McCain clinched the nomination, he has not satisfied conservatives opposed to his positions on global warming, campaign finance reform, immigration, domestic oil drilling and how to ban same-sex marriages.

William Kristol:

In any case, with the battle against Hillary Clinton behind him, everything seems to be going swimmingly for Obama. Meanwhile, the McCain campaign dog-paddles along. And almost every Republican I’ve talked to is alarmed that the McCain campaign doesn’t seem up to the task of electing John McCain.

Oklahoma Republicans are primarily Christian conservatives. McCain doesn’t share their values, and he doesn’t seem to be able to conduct a civil conversation or maintain an ongoing relationship with those that do.

His campaign is off to a rocky start, and it doesn’t seem likely to get much better. Their only hope is to be as negative as possible, and that’s not a tactic that’s going to play well in Oklahoma.

McCain’s Health Care Plan: Don’t get sick

McCain’s Radical Prescription

While Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has revealed little about his health care plan, the broad outlines of his proposal represent a “radical” departure from the current employer-based system, providing less coverage and imposing higher costs. McCain envisions a system where most Americans shop for health insurance on their own in a highly deregulated market, which would charge higher deductibles and co-payments and provides less coverage. Ultimately, McCain’s vision places the 158 million Americans who receive their health care through their jobs in danger of losing coverage. McCain replaces the current tax breaks for employer-sponsored health insurance with a one-size-fits-all tax credit of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families, equalizing the tax treatment of employer and individual plans and enticing healthy workers to buy cheaper but less substantive insurance in the individual market place. But the departure of healthy workers from employer insurance pools would drive up average health costs, forcing more workers to opt out entirely. The entire employer health insurance system could unravel, “ending this as an option for Americans who prefer it,” as the Center for American Progress Action Fund noted. Among those who would lose their health care are fifty-six million Americans with pre-existing chronic health conditions. Thus, McCain, a cancer survivor, would be unlikely to get coverage under his own plan if he did not have government-provided insurance. The McCain plan offers a simple prescription for Americans: don’t get sick.

Emphasis added.

John McCain’s first wife

Who is Carol McCain? The first wife John McCain discarded when she was disfigured and disabled by a car accident — although she had waited patiently for him while he was abused in a Vietnamese prison camp. He married a beer heiress one month after divorcing Carol.

The wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind

Carol insists she remains on good terms with her ex-husband, who agreed as part of their divorce settlement to pay her medical costs for life. ‘I have no bitterness,’

she says. ‘My accident is well recorded. I had 23 operations, I am five inches shorter than I used to be and I was in hospital for six months. It was just awful, but it wasn’t the reason for my divorce.

‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens…it just does.’

Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the field’. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.

McCain was then earning little more than £25,000 a year as a naval officer, while his new father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was a multi-millionaire who had impeccable political connections.

[...]

McCain moved to Arizona with his new bride immediately after their 1980 marriage. There, his new father-in-law gave him a job and introduced him to local businessmen and political powerbrokers who would smooth his passage to Washington via the House of Representatives and Senate.

And yet despite his popularity as a politician, there are those who won’t forget his treatment of his first wife.

Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit.

‘When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it.

‘Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better.

‘This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it all belonged to Carol.’

McCain willing to spy on Americans illegally

McCain: I’d Spy on Americans Secretly, Too

If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president’s wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

[...]

McCain’s new position plainly contradicts statements he made in a December 20, 2007 interview with the Boston Globe where he implicitly criticized Bush’s five-year secret end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

McCain on War

John McCain, in the foreword to an edition of David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest

It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn’t support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay. No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. If the nation and the government lack that resolve, it is criminal to expect men in the field to carry it alone.

Emphasis added.

Book Review: The Real McCain by Cliff Schecter

Reviewed by Patch Adam Perryman

The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Him – and Why Independents Shouldn’t.

By Cliff Schecter
Published by PoliPointPress (May 2008)
187 pages – $14.95

“I bought [The Straight Talk Express] once. I gave the man a campaign contribution… back in 2000, when I thought he held informed, principled positions high above the fray of partisan politics. That moderate McCain (McCain 1.0) quickly vanished in the late 1990s. Who knows what will follow?”
…
“This book is more than a cautionary tale. It’s enough to make you vote for someone else.”

Being Cliff Schecter’s first book, it’s reassuring that he doesn’t focus on scrutinizing McCain’s public characteristics with malevolence. Instead, he plainly examines the senator’s frequent political maneuvers and how they have shaped and reshaped public opinion of him.

In 150 pages of clear, researched and witty language, McCain’s reinvention of himself is adeptly detailed. This book contains a gauged chronology, comprehensive voting record, direct interviews to explain why the Gentleman from Arizona’s character-shifting should be anything but polyamorous.

“As Jacob Weisberg said in Slate, there have been three McCains, so far… A conditional friend to conservatives, an appealing maverick to independents, and a noxious Bush apologist to Democrats.”

“Common opinions” of Arizona’s Senator, John Sydney McCain, III, have varied over the course of his over 25-year congressional career. However, when adding in his storied background involving Vietnam as naval aviator and Viet Cong POW, you get the makings of a complex man and an increase in the leniencies people afford him. Most of this is known to the savvy and blog-friendly folks with whom Cliff Schecter is very familiar as a contributor to the Huffington Post and MSNBC. He writes in a manner that reads as succinctly as any blog or biographical work should while not requiring a particular fancying of either as a precursor.

Any undecided voter could read this quickly and fully and come away thinking that (though biased against McCain’s campaign for President,) having respect for McCain’s past military service is not reason enough to vote for him in November. For this service in the Navy, as Schecter contends, has, “…everything to do with how [McCain] is perceived but little to do with what he has become.”

Each chapter of the book outlines particular aspects of Senator McCain’s shifting positions, demeanors and alignments among Washington groups and individuals. The summation of these marks him not as a maverick who thinks outside or inside of partisan politics, but as an opportunist and panderer who seeks only to gain every advantage that best improves his position and self-interest – even if (and sometimes specifically because) it contrasts with a previous position he’d held.

As a perfect example of McCain’s inconsistency, Schecter contrasts the signature issue of McCain’s steadfast support for the invasion of Iraq. Schecter quotes a then-Congressman (AZ: CD-1) McCain’s 1983 stance during a House debate as to whether or not Congress should authorize President Reagan to deploy troops in Beirut, Lebanon:

“The longer we stay… the harder it will be for us to leave. We will be trapped… what can we expect if we withdraw? The same as will happen if we stay.”

Congressman McCain then voted against the resolution to mobilize the Marines. Dreadfully, this did nothing to prevent 220 of them being killed only a month later. Schecter creates a basis for us to sharply contrast what a past “GOP Maverick politician” as McCain appeared to be in the 1980s, with a deeply flawed Senator McCain of today. One who writes with vitriol in The Weekly Standard of the need for a “Rouge State Rollback” or accepts money from major 527 contributors like Bob Perry of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

“Candidate McCain would have us believe that his experience and leadership will help in Iraq. But if it weren’t for McCain and his colleagues, we likely never would have gone in there.”

Schecter hits the high points time and time again in this book. From McCain’s Congressional voting record:

[Paraphrased] By March of 2008, McCain had missed 261 out of 486 votes, or 56%. Only one Senator had a worse record than this. Tim Johnson, and he had been incapacitated for months due to a brain hemorrhage.

… to his infamous, and hair-trigger, Senate temper:

[Paraphrased] During a luncheon among over 30 other Republican Senators, McCain stood up after a heated disagreement with a fellow Senator and called him a shithead. The offended Senator demanded an apology to which Senator McCain responded, “Okay, I apologize; but you’re still a shithead.”

Other McCain faux pas have received more critical examination by other forums. Some of these are touched upon in the book to collect as conversation starters.

Such examples could be a reference to McCain’s tasteless joke which he told during a GOP Fundraiser in 1998 at the expenses of Janet Reno and Chelsea Clinton, or that while on a reelection tour in 1992 as his wife Cindy was playfully teasing Johnny’s thinning pate, he angrily returned her merriment by calling her a “trollop” and then dropping the C-Bomb.

Perhaps these tidbits were added just as segue for the candidate’s recently made statements that a would-be President McCain would drop the A-Bomb on Iran?

In the end, The Real McCain is a versatile resource to call upon when confronted with those who are leaning toward McCain based on an outdated opinion of him, or for those who may have trepidation toward the Democratic Party nominee or even for voters who state they’ll, “Vote for McCain before they vote for the Democrat.”

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Patch Adam Perryman is a grassroots organizer for the Democratic Party and lives in Portland, Oregon. He regularly contributes to several blogs including Daily Kos and Blue Oregon.

Reprinted with permission. Originally published at Daily Kos.

Oklahoma Vets: McCain doesn’t support the troops where it counts

New video exposes the truth about McCain’s votes — against the best interests of the troops on the ground, and returned veterans help with health care and education.

Oklahoma Vets and Jim Inhofe

Sen. Jim Inhofe has failed the troops time and time again. His lack of integrity is staggering. He has repeatedly voted against bills to provide the troops with adequate medical care, body armor and equipment, yet he claims ‘you won’t find a better record of support for our men and women in uniform.’ All it takes is a quick check of his voting record to see that he’s a fraud. That’’s why we made the video.

People in the film:

* Chris Ritter (Gulf War Vet) – US Navy (Ret), OK National Guard (Active)
* Nathaniel Batchelder (Vietnam Vet) – Specialist 5th Class, US Army (Ret)
* Miranda L. Norman (Iraq War Vet) – Specialist, Oklahoma Army National Guard (Ret)
* Col. (Ret) Katherine Scheirman – Medical Doctor, US Air Force

Change is strictly ’symbolic’ for McCain campaign

First John McCain’s campaign adopted the key word “change” from the Obama camp, where it has been used as a mantra — unchanged — for over a year (because Obama and his staff correctly read the mood of the American public). Now he as even pilfered Barack Obama’s distinctive graphic, put it through a wringer, laid it in the sun for a few hours, and adopted it as a new logo.

So presto! As fast as you can say “New Improved Tide!” McCain is now the “change candidate.” Too bad about that documented voting record and the Google, though, which allow anyone to see his actual history — consistently on the side of lobbyists, the elite and corporate interests, and not the middle class.

Facts about McCain for Jewish Voters

McCAIN …
• McCain opposes women’s reproductive rights and favors a repeal of Roe v. Wade.
• He has never voted against a Bush nominee to a federal court at any level.
• CBS News reported, “McCain, the eventual GOP nominee, promised to appoint judges in the mold of Roberts and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.” – 5/6/2008
• McCain believes intelligent design should be taught in public schools.
• He supports continuing the Bush tax cuts, would add business tax cuts, and says he doesn’t know enough about the economy: “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” – New York Times, 1/14/2008

AMERICA IS A CHRISTIAN NATION
• McCain believes the “Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation” and “that is hardly a controversial claim.” – CNN, 10/1/2007
• He once stated that a candidate’s Christian faith is “an important part of our qualifications to lead.” – AP 9/29/2007

CHARGES GUILT BY ASSOCIATION
Both Obama and McCain have fine records on Israel. However, McCain’s allies attack Obama’s record by using charges of guilt by association.
If this is their standard, they should explain the following:
• McCain said he “would send ‘the smartest guy I know’ [to the Middle East…] ‘Brent Scowcroft, or James Baker, though I know that you in Israel don’t like Baker.’” – Ha’aretz, 7/28/2006
• He also suggested, “as president he would seek to develop a kind of consensus foreign policy, consulting the ‘best minds I know,’ including President Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski.” – Los Angeles Times, 3/16/2008
• McCain actively sought the endorsements of radical ministers John Hagee and Rod Parsley.

CONFUSES HIS FOREIGN POLICY INFORMATION
• McCain repeatedly confused Sunni insurgents with Shiite extremists.
• McCain’s statement that the U.S. had “drawn down to pre-surge levels” was flat-out wrong. – Washington Post, 6/1/2008

from NJDC (pdf)