Panderer in Chief Prepares for CPAC
February 7, 2008
As he closes in on his party's nomination, John McCain is bringing the Double Talk Express to places it's never been before: like today's CPAC conference. Desperate to lock up the right wing of his party, McCain is heading to the annual Conservative Political Action Committee he skipped last year to give a speech sandwiched between Vice President Dick Cheney today and President Bush tomorrow.
Throughout this campaign season, McCain has been working overtime trying to remake himself into a candidate the right wing of the Republican Party can accept in 2008. Along the way, he has cast aside his principles by flip-flopping on signature issues like campaign finance and immigration reform, and embracing the very same "agents of intolerance" and shady campaign tactics he once denounced.
Campaign McCain's "extreme makeover" may help him pander to the right wing, but the rest of America has figured out that a vote for John McCain is a vote for a third Bush term. Whether he is pining for a 100 year war in Iraq, calling for Roe v. Wade to be overturned, supporting efforts to make the same Bush tax cuts he once opposed permanent, supporting President Bush's veto of health care for 10 million children, or applauding the President's decision to commute Scooter Libby's sentence, John McCain has promised four more years of the same failed Bush policies that have undermined our economy and made America less secure.
"The more people watch John McCain desperately cast aside his principles to pander to the right wing of his Party, the less they will trust him to provide the change America's working families want," said Democratic National Committee spokesman Damien LaVera. "The last thing our country needs is four more years of disastrous Republican leadership on everything from Iraq to the economy to health care, but McCain doesn't have anything else to offer."
President Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain:
Three Peas in a CPAC Pod
John McCain Said He'd Vote Against the Immigration Bill He Wrote. Asked by Janet Hook of the Los Angeles Times during the debate if his "original proposal came to the Senate floor, would you vote for it?" McCain tried to argue it would not come up for a vote, but then admitted, "no, I would not." [CNN debate, 1/30/08; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M34KKaczvKg]
Willing to Spend 'a Hundred Years' or a 'Million Years' in Iraq. McCain interrupted a voter during a townhall meeting in New Hampshire telling him it "may be a hundred" years in Iraq and "that would be fine with me." After the townhall meeting, he told a reporter "that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for 'a thousand years' or 'a million years,' as far as he was concerned." [McCain Derry, NH townhall meeting, 1/3/08; motherjones.com, 1/3/08]
Wants to Overturn Roe v. Wade. At an appearance in Spartanburg, South Carolina last year John McCain "I do not support Roe v. Wade, it should be overturned." [Fox News, 2/19/07]
McCain Supported Bush's Veto of SCHIP and Providing Insurance For Millions of Uninsured Children. McCain voted against reauthorizing the State Children's Health Insurance Program for five years, expanding the program by $35.2 billion. [Senate Vote #307, 8/2/07]
Voted For Bush Tax Cuts And Defended The Flip-Flop As A Legislative Gimmick. John McCain voted to extend tax cuts supported by the president that were set to expire between 2005 and 2010. "The Senate voted 53-47…in favor of extending the president's investor tax cuts on dividends and capital gains." McCain's vote was described as "a sharp reversal of his anti-tax-cut posture," though he defended the shift, saying, "it was a gimmick," reasoning that "the tax cuts were temporary and then had to be made permanent. The tax cuts are now there and voting to revoke them would have been to--not to extend them would have meant a tax increase. I've never voted for a tax increase in my life." [Senate vote #10, H.R. 4297, 2/2/06, passed 66-31; New York Times, 2/21/06; Washington Times, 3/6/06; NBC News, 4/2/06]
Campaign McCain Embraces Jerry Falwell after Denouncing Him as "Agents of Intolerance." McCain told the Christian Broadcast Network, "'I have had meetings with [Southern Baptist Convention President] Dr. Richard Land. I have met with Reverend Jerry Falwell. I have had good conversations with [Evangelical leader] Reverend [John] Hagee. There are many others. Now I have not had a conversation with Dr. [James] Dobson because he has said he prays that I will not be the nominee of the party. I'm not sure where we start the conversation.' McCain has had a rocky relationship with religious conservatives going back to 2000, when he branded the Reverends Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as 'agents of intolerance.'" [CBN.com, 3/19/07, http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/122005.aspx]
McCain Hired Swift Boat Advertising Firm Designed to Attack Veterans. "Senator John McCain, intent on succeeding where his freewheeling presidential campaign of 2000 failed, is assembling a team of political bruisers for 2008. And it includes advisers who once sought to skewer him and whose work he has criticized as stepping over the line in the past. In 2000, Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, said the advertisements run against him by George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, distorted his record. But he has hired three members of the team that made those commercials -- Mark McKinnon, Russell Schriefer and Stuart Stevens -- to work on his presidential campaign. In 2004, Mr. McCain said the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advertisement asserting that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts had not properly earned his medals from the Vietnam War was 'dishonest and dishonorable.' Nonetheless, he has hired the firm that made the spots, Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, which worked on his 2000 campaign, to work for him again this year. [New York Times, 2/4/07]
McCain: More of the Same Bush Supreme Court. "I would appoint justices such as the ones I've strongly supported and gotten through the Senate with the help of many others or help along with others. Only those who strictly interpret the constitution of the United States and do not legislate from the bench…If you have justices that have a clear, conservative, a clear, strict interpretation of the constitution of the United States, then you don't have to worry about what their decisions will be." [Fox News Sunday, 2/3/2008]
