Mc Can't

John Mc Cain, where are you?

John Mc Cain used to rate so high on my list I considered voting for him over Gore had he beat Bush in the Republican primary of 2000. Though I didn't always agree I respected his standing up for his principles even if that went against the party establishment's wishes. Sadly, that John Mc Cain is gone. The new John Mc Cain has switched positions he's had for years and moved to the right over the past two. He has sold out to the party machine. He has hired the same lobbyists he used to speak out against to run his campaign. He's hired the same smear merchants George Bush and Karl Rove used to defeat him in 2000. You thought they went after Democrats? These guys insinuated Cindy Mc Cain had an extra-marital affair and had a black child. They wondered aloud if his time spent as a POW hadn't made him mentally unstable. (Gee, what would happen if Obama suggested those things?)

Mc Cain voted along with the president, when he bothered to show up the past couple of years, almost 100% of the time. He was a staunch ally of the Bush Administration and did the rounds on the Sunday talk shows to help perpetuate the lies that lead us into Iraq. Though he has a different view of history now. A few moments on-line will yield plenty of material that will clearly illustrate the contradictions. Worse though, he's resorted to the same rhetoric of fear the Bushies use against opponents. He has sunk to questioning how American Obama is. How he wants to lose the war to become President. These are baseless claims and not worthy of the Senator from Arizona. It's beyond sleazy to suggest these things let alone back them up.

He has voted against his own legislation on immigration. He has broken his own campaign finance law he wrote with Democrat Russ Feingold. He opposed the Bush tax cuts and despite their obvious failure to deliver on their promises, now supports them. He rightfully called Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell "agents of intolerance." He has now sought the endorsement of any and every anti-semetic, homophobic, and hypocritical mega church pastor across the country. He was for Roe v. Wade, now he's against it. He was against offshore drilling, now it's all he can talk about. He was for limits and oversight of the Executive Branch, now he seems eager to assume the new powers Bush invented for himself and his posterity.

I can accept a person changing their mind and on some of these issues perhaps he's genuine in his new point of view. However, it seems apparent he has abandoned his principles in order to win. His message has become more of attacking the other guy and not about real ideas. Real ideas the old Mc Cain used to espouse on a regular basis. It's very unfortunate. If the Mc Cain of 2000 was around, this would be a fantastic race where ideas were discussed instead of character attacked. His campaign only serves to divide and conquer, us. Mc Cain argues, you can't trust Obama, so vote for me, then worry about what I'll do.

There is more to consider than just policy shifts and partisanship. Mc Cain is 72 years old and spent 5 years of his life as a POW. He has a history of skin cancer. His over all health is an issue. I don't elect a President to die in office. I don't dismiss them out of hand because of age either. Bu tlet's remember, the last PResident we had in office that was in his 70s left with Alzheimer's. That was Ronald Reagan. I don't wish him ill or dismiss the ordeal of being a POW, in fact I am considering it heavily. Unlike the Swift Boaters and Purple Heart mocking Republicans of 2004 I don't feel the need to question Mc Cain's service to his country. He should be honored for it and has been. He also collects 100% disability for his service. Too bad he's voted against benefits for our veterans every chance he gets.

Mc Cain now tries to take credit for the recent GI Bill that passed. He opposed it on every front. His reason? The benefits were too extravagant. He feared short term enlistment but ignored provisions that would also encourage re-enlistment. For our troops now. For the self less men and women who put their lives on the line for our freedom. He has failed utterly. How do the Republicans get away with the myth they support the troops anyway? They just throw them in the meat grinder. It's an illsuion. You'd think Mc Cain would know better. But he capitulated on torture too so I'm not surprised. One thing has been consistent with Mc Cain. He has never supported the vets. Check the VFW and other veterans groups. He does the worst kind of pandering. He uses them and his own military service as a qualification to be commander in chief, but ignores them when they return home. He claims it's because of pork. But he's been more than willing to line the pockets of war profiteers at our troops expense. This is one issue he hasn't flipped on and it's sad.

Another un-admirable quality in Mc Cain, his notorious temper. He has called his colleagues expletives on the Senate floor. He almost attacked the mother of an MIA soldier in Vietnam outside of it's chambers. He's physically assaulted colleagues from time to time too. It's no secret and he is non-partisan in these attacks! Do we really want a loose cannon that has suffered unmeasurable mental and physical torture who is reaching the apex of our average life span become President? Not me.

Mc Cain offers nothing in the way of solutions. He has surrounded himself with advisors like Phil Graham who was instrumental in pushing through the legislation that has caused our current mortgage crisis. That's his go to guy on economics folks. We're screwed! His expert on the country of Georgia, a former lobbyist for Georgia. But recently, Mc Cain had to pull his information about the former Soviet Republic from Wikipedia. What the he!!? Are you kidding me? I shouldn't be surprised. He seems to handle geography and anthropology as casually as Bush does.

He doesn't know who supports who, who's fighting for who, when the surge happened. He claimed victory 3 years ago and now says it's just around the corner. This past weekend, an absurdly coherent Mc Cain (that's right, absurdly coherent!) seemed to knock question after question out of the ball park at a mega-church $1,000 a seat shin dig that included Obama. If his handlers didn't tell him what questions they were asking Obama so he had an idea of what he was getting into, they weren't handling him well. Sadly, Mc Cain denies suggestions they did this and he had no idea. Beyond this, he told a touching story he never bothered to tell before, until recently, that involved a touching moment as a POW on Christmas day. One of his captors drew a little cross in the dirt and he did a little tug on the crowd's heart when he said they were just two Christians for a moment. (Is it Christian to hold someone against their will like that?, I digress.) It was a great piece of theater and I don't begrudge him that. Good for him. However, it seems unlikely the story is his own. It appears he either lifted the story from the Russian author Solzhenitsyn or what he accounted for previously, another POW's story. So now he's culling material from a "red" and a "real hero" and calling it his own experience. Wait, that was the description FoxNews would use to describe Obama if he had done the same thing.

Consider for a second if Obama had done that. See the double standard yet? Keep looking. The press is giving Mc Cain a pass on many issues they'd hammer the Democrat for. What if Obama offered his wife up to thousands of bikers for a topless beauty contest? John did. What if Obama "borrowed" a story and called it his own experience? Obama had dozens of lobbyists on his staff? If he left his first wife after cheating on her with his current wife because she had been mangled in a car wreck? A billionaire beer baroness who had a beef with Mothers Against Drunk Driving? They'd hammer him pretty good I bet. Not that I propose the media is solely biased towards the right. It's driven by profit and they report for that purpose. Profit is it's bias. CNN recently pondered whether or not Obama was the anti-Christ. Does one really have to ask beyond questioning the asinine implication he might indeed be the devil incarnate? Mc Cain is pandering to the lowest common denominator. He's playing on fear of the unknown, the exotic, the slightly less American Barack Obama. He isn't offering real solutions. He isn't trying to run a better campaign that's civil as he promised. He doesn't attack Obama's policies but his character. He is in the gutter. And it's sad