RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events McCain in 08?

It's interesting to see a staunch conservative like Pat Buchanan so consistently critical of John McCain:

• ONWARD THE REVOLUTION! [McCain's short-sighted foreign policy]
  
  
  
  "For decades in the Middle East we had a strategy of relying upon autocrats to provide order and stability. We relied on the Shah, the autocratic rulers of Egypt, the generals of Pakistan, the Saudi royal family. ... We can no longer delude ourselves that relying on these outdated autocrats is the safest bet."
  
  Speaking of self-delusion, does McCain believe the "democrats" lately elected in Pakistan will be tougher on al-Qaida and the Taliban than Pervez Musharraf, who has twice escaped assassination for having sided with us?
  
  Does McCain think this new crowd in Islamabad will be more pro-American than the general, when the people who voted them in are among the most anti-American in the Islamic world?
  
  From Richard Nixon to George Bush I, we expelled Moscow from Egypt, won the Cold War, brought peace between Egypt and Israel, and created a worldwide alliance, including Hafez al-Assad of Syria, that drove Saddam's army out of Kuwait.
  
  What has the Bush-McCain democracy crusade produced, save electoral victories for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah and Hamas? And if we dump the sultan of Oman, President Mubarak, and the king of Saudi Arabia, who does McCain think will replace them?
  
  
  McCain proposes a "League of Democracies" to unite a hundred nations for peace and freedom. "Revanchist Russia," however, is to be black-balled from McCain's league and thrown out of the G-8.
  
  What would this accomplish other than undoing the work of Reagan in bringing Moscow in from the cold, driving Russia into the arms of China, restarting the Cold War and recreating the Beijing-Moscow axis it was Nixon's great achievement to break up?
  
  Does our "realistic idealist" think a NATO of 25 nations that has mustered a piddling 16,000 soldiers, most of them noncombatants, to stand beside us in Afghanistan is going to confront a nuclear-armed Russia?
  
  What is critical, especially in wartime, is not whether a regime is autocratic or democratic, but whether it is hostile or friendly.

Although it's difficult to see Buchanan having any favorable opinion of the pacifict liberal tendencies of either Obama or Hillary either (to say nothing of their immigration policy).

Is Buchanan really a "staunch conservative" any more? He seems more like a populist/isolationalist to me.

Buchanan is a conservative, but he is dissatisfied with the direction of the Republican party, which he sees as having diverted away from the pragmatic conservatism that existed from the time he served under Nixon, on up through the Reagan years.

He is definitely populist, and arguably relatively isolationist, but only isolationist to the extent of not getting involved in foreign wars and alliances that are not essential to the United States' sovereignty and security. He sees us as over-committed in an over-abundance of defense alliances that, since the Cold War ended, are unneccessary to U.S. national security, and have been bleeding us financially in the Bush Sr., Clinton and W.Bush years. NATO, SEATO, Korea, Taiwan, Bosnia Kosovo, Somalia, Haiti... plus military aid and foreign aid to a wide variety of countries that would hate us with without our aid, and arguably do anyway (Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia...)



True conservatism is about smaller government, reduced fiscal spending, balanced budgets, protecting our borders and national defense, limiting military use to foreign situations that directly threaten us (i.e., avoiding foreign entanglements), and protecting the unity and best interests of U.S. citizens.

Since the Bush Sr years, Republicans have been compromising American interests, and Conservative Republican core beliefs, in exchange for artificially sustained Republican power from 1994-2006.
And along with the Democrats, selling out the U.S. and its people to corporate interests, NAFTA and offshoring.
(Bush Sr. was elected to be Reagan II, but oversaw huge domestic spending by Congress and also raised taxes, and did not use his veto power, and largely due to the Gulf war, oversaw a huge rise in the federal deficit, as well as encouraging NAFTA and offshoring, that were passed under Clinton).

And we've been on a snowballing treadmill of offshoring factories and jobs ever since , excessive corporate-serving rampant immigration (both legal and illegal) for which U.S. taxpayers are picking up the tab while corporations reap the benefits of their cheap labor. Plus huge trade deficits ($800 billion annually, the last time I looked), and skyrocketing national debt as a percentage of GNP, together resulting in a falling dollar-value globally, that collectively are seriously threatening our lifestyle and sovereignty.

I think Buchanan is (like myself) at his heart and soul a Republican Conservative, but he is leveraging for productive change within his party.

I think he outlines this best in his 2004 book, Where the Right Went Wrong.

Does this mean you're not voting for him?

wondy will vote for the first one to spit on a mexican.
it's the christian thing to do apparently.

If the Mexican's whomod, we're all doing that.

I admire Buchanan, but I don't agree with him on everything.

I haven't decided who I'll vote for.
My candidate of choice was Romney, who I considered the most intelligent, capable, and proven candidate.
But that ship has sailed.

I think McCain is on the surface the lesser of the remaining three evils. But on immigration, he's equally bad as Hillary or Obama (or W. Bush).
On foreign policy McCain seems short-sighted and overly ideological.
If FDR felt the same way about Russia and our allies in the Middle East as McCain, we might not have won World War II. (Although Carter, Bill Clinton, and both Hillary and Obama have manifested similar posturing stupidity, as in the example of suggesting we boycott the Beijing Olympics).
And McCain's opinion that free trade in its current form is perfectly OK. It's not.

I've debated whether it would be better to elect Hillary or Obama and let the Democrats fail and take the blame for 4 years, than to elect a Republican that I disagree with on so many issues, who would further (like W. Bush) misrepresent what a Republican is really supposed to be.

I've even weighed Ron Paul (arguably the most Constitutional), and Ralph Nader. In Nader's case, I think his moment has passed, and I increasingly disagree with his solutions, despite my respect for him.


I know you were probably just trolling, but I gave a serious answer anyway.

From the Associated Press comes the news that Democratic Party ad edits McCain's response on economy:

• The video of McCain's response is edited to exclude the remainder of his answer, where he acknowledged that "things are tough right now." This type of selective quoting has become commonplace. Obama, in criticizing McCain on the economy last week, used only a portion of a McCain answer to Bloomberg Television.

They can't score points on what McCain actually argues, so they have to take part of his answer, cut off the rest, and hope nobody notices?

You know, the funny thing is, conservatives have their gripes with McCain. We know he has flaws. It's not like we run around telling others in religious tones how we "came to" him. We could put together some pretty tough attack ads hitting him from a different angle. But from Howard Dean and Co., between this one and the "John McCain is so old" — it's giving off a whiff of desperation, isn't it? A feeling that they're throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks?

Because if using half a quote is the way they want to play it, fine. But let's never hear Obama again complain that Jeremiah Wright is being judged on "snippets" or that his words in San Francisco were "mangled."

i'm now interested in going back 4 years and seeing how you overused "i voted for the bill before i voted against it" ignoring that in between the two votes the bill was changed. instead you just took part of his answer, cut off the rest and hoped nobody noticed.

None of which changed the meaning of what Kerry did or said. But nice try.

yes it did. you made it sound like a joke by quoting that one line without the context in which it was said. not that i blame you obviously, you just follow your fox news gurus.

Ray had to resort to a "Fox News" attack. I win again.

no one ever wins.
welcome to the rkmbs.

i always win ray.

McCain: I'm Hamas' Nightmare: McCain taunts Obama over recent 'endorsement' from Hamas official, Obama camp calls attack a 'distraction'.

i think Hamas, like the rest of the world, is just afraid John Mccain will decide to drive himself home from the farmer's market.

heh. mccain's old. I've never seen that used before. points for originality.

Received this via email:

The Wall Street Journal has a story about McCain I'd never heard before:

• [Ret. Col. Bud] Day relayed to me one of the stories Americans should hear. It involves what happened to him after escaping from a North Vietnamese prison during the war. When he was recaptured, a Vietnamese captor broke his arm and said, "I told you I would make you a cripple."
  
  The break was designed to shatter Mr. Day's will. He had survived in prison on the hope that one day he would return to the United States and be able to fly again. To kill that hope, the Vietnamese left part of a bone sticking out of his arm, and put him in a misshapen cast. This was done so that the arm would heal at "a goofy angle," as Mr. Day explained. Had it done so, he never would have flown again.
  
  But it didn't heal that way because of John McCain. Risking severe punishment, Messrs. McCain and Day collected pieces of bamboo in the prison courtyard to use as a splint. Mr. McCain put Mr. Day on the floor of their cell and, using his foot, jerked the broken bone into place. Then, using strips from the bandage on his own wounded leg and the bamboo, he put Mr. Day's splint in place.
  
  Years later, Air Force surgeons examined Mr. Day and complemented the treatment he'd gotten from his captors. Mr. Day corrected them. It was Dr. McCain who deserved the credit. Mr. Day went on to fly again.

Wow.

Obama did the same thing for a white kid that accidentally stumbled into the Trinity Church, after Rev Wright nearly beat him to death.

WaPo Manufactures McCain Scandal:

• A few weeks ago, the New York Times tried to manufacture a McCain land deal scandal and today it’s the Washington Post’s turn.
  
  The front-page headline of Post staff writer Matthew Mosk’s story is titled “McCain Pushed Land Swap that Benefits Backer.” It says McCain negotiated a land swap to allow Arizona rancher Fred Ruskin to exchange his checkerboard of property located in the Prescott National Forest for an equal piece of continuous federal land that was later sold for development. Mainly because the developer, Steven A. Betts, who purchased the land from Ruskin is a donor to McCain’s presidential campaign, reporter Mosk smells trouble.
  
  But Mosk never proves a connection between the donations and the deal, and there are many details he left out, some provided in ample detail by the McCain campaign, the rancher and the businessman.
  
  Firstly, McCain didn’t single handedly negotiate the deal even though Mosk’s headline makes it sounds as if he did. The highly-scrutinized land swap is the biggest in Arizona’s history and passed the House and Senate in July 2005 after receiving a laundry list of endorsements from Arizona-based groups and media.
  
  It was even supported by Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano, and for good reason. A 2004 editorial by the Arizona Republic applauded the swap because it “will consolidate 70,000 acres of environmentally sensitive Forest Service lands and those owned by rancher Fred Ruskin, doubling the acreage for public access and recreation.”
  
  “The exchange is a blessing for several youth camps that will able to gain title so they can better manage their assets in the national forest,” it praised.
  
  McCain’s role in passing the bill is heightened for the sake of Mosk’s story. McCain initially withheld his support of the swap based on environmental concerns.
  
  [Later, McCain and others came up with a compromise which included numerous protections and thereafter] McCain introduced the bill “at the request of the U.S. Forest Service, as well as many Northern Arizona communities…to improve the management of forest lands and conservation of natural resources. The legislation also provided communities with an opportunity to acquire land needed for economic development, community services and open space.”
  
  Although the title of Mosk’s story is titled “McCain Pushed Land Swap that Benefits Backer” nothing shows McCain was aware Betts’s company, SunCor, would later buy the land from Ruskin. And, according to campaign finance records Ruskin has never donated money to McCain.
  
  “SunCor had not remotely entered the picture at the time Sen McCain decided to support the exchange, and it was to be another eighteen months before they actually invested in the ranch,” Ruskin’s letter to Mosk stated.
  
  In fact, when Mosk interviewed Betts, Betts told Mosk there was “absolutely no” connections between his contributions to McCain’s campaign and purchase. On behalf of McCain, spokesman Rogers said “at no time during the consideration of this legislation was there any involvement with SunCor.”

In short, McCain is asked to sign on to a federal land swap that is supported by the majority of his constituents. He works to make sure the deal is good for the environment and the agrees to support it, along with every other major political figure in the state.

Some time later, after McCain's involvement is finished (and years after he was originally asked to support the legislation), some of the land involved gets sold by a private developer to someone who happened to donate money to McCain at one point.

This, the Washington Post hints, is some sort of scandal.

Sh'yeah...right....

This was all predictable, of course. Just as whomod went from loving McCain to hating him as soon as it looked like McCain was the GOP nominee, now that his opponent is Obama, the media savior, McCain is going to be the target of all sorts of crap from the liberal press.

Wow.

Pretty strong and decisive speech on global warming as being a serious and man made problem.

I wonder if he'll give that same speech, say at the GOP convention or in front of a business group rather than in Oregon to where it plays well.

right now I think the FOX news pundits' heads are exploding. In order to help McCain they're pretty much going to have to contradict 7 years of furious spin and ridicule.

Bloomberg News's Al Hunt explains why our noble colleagues across the aisle are walking around pining for the days when Tom DeLay would deliver them magic ponies by swinging his awesome hammer:



In short, Democrats are flush with cash (well, Barak Obama is) , more energized (um, Obama), fielding better candidates, and we have the Worst President in History with which to saddle the opposition. The one apparent lifeline Republicans have, says Hunt, is a guy they've spent years mocking and vilifying: John McCain. But his coattails already seem a little tattered:



A huge percentage of Americans agree with Barack Obama that we need a prudent plan to get the hell outta Mess-O-Potamia and let the Iraqis exercise their own sovereignty. And Bloomberg's latest poll shows that We The People are in no mood for Bush and McCain's whitewashing of the bad economic news that trickles down day after day:



[A]mong the 78% of voters who said they believe the economy has slid into a recession, 52% would vote for Obama, compared with 32% for McCain.

99.99993% of all polls quoted by Whomod are just partisans spins, as Whomod continues to talk out his ass.

52% and 32% don't add up to 78%.

The poll you cite is meaningless.

As G-man has pointed out in multiple posts, the New York Times, Washington Post, CBS News, and other liberal partisans masking as journalists, have attempted to distort the record or outright slander McCain to advance the Democrat rival they favor.

There's plenty of contradiction to ridicule in both Hillary and Obama.


And again, if you're going to slantedly imply that the polls favor the Democrats, you might want to disclose that the only ones with lower favorable polls than W.Bush, are the Democrat leadership in Congress.


So clearly, the polls show people see flaws in Democrat political leadership, even if you, in your partisan gloating and hate, do not.

What the fuck did your entire post have to do with McCain saying global warming is real and a man made problem that needs to be tacked immediately. Not to mention chastising the past 7 years of inaction and failed leadership on the issue.

Unless you're just trying to dodge the entire fact that McCain just contradicted the GOP position on global warming. It's certainly welcome. But as I said, I seriously doubt he'd give the same speech, say at the GOP convention or with a business audience.

What I want to see though are the right wing talking heads who mock and ridicule global warming to now defend McCain on this. Therin lies comedy gold.

Speaking as one of the board's right wing talking heads, I think McCain is wrong on global warming.

I still think that, as a candidate, he's preferable to Obama or Clinton.

As for national "right wing talking heads," I've read criticism of McCain over this issue at both Rush Limbaugh's site and National Review. Accordingly, I'm not sure you're going to see a lot of "comedy gold" wherein they bend over backwards to defend him on the issue.

If anything, the "comedy gold" here is that this tends to show that McCain hasn't, as you claim, sold out his beliefs and become a "Bush clone" and, therefore, your own massive about-face on him is pretty clearly based on nothing so much as the fact he is now the GOP nominee.

This is why I like McCain, plus the fact he's for free trade. He do seem to be sincere on the latter, compared to Bush (the steel tarrifs) and the Democrats (all the NAFTA BS).

I don't think there's anything wrong with mccain having an opinion on global warming as long as he doesn't cave to the democraticalseses' (don't shorten it, whomod hates that) pressure to hamstring the economy in hopes of making a negligible difference.



it was never about whether or not mccain was a bush clone. it's always been about how the only way we can be saved is by asking barack obama to be our personal savior and inviting him into our hearts. the algore told me so.

yeah if he was with a private audience of elitists, he'd prolly say something like small town people are xenophobes, who cling to their guns and religion, or that the government created AIDS...no waitaminute that's another candidate....

Well, when he goes back to his original beliefs on Iraq and on the Bush tax cuts, then you may be on to something...

If the algore is the lord highfather does that make Obama the Christ figure of the global warming religion?

And if Gore's the father, and Obama's the son, who's the holy ghost?

Rev. Wright?

I think whomod may be trying to line that corner office up for himself, actually.

gay

First off, you hacked out half of what I posted, in an effort to paint it as incoherent.

Second, my point is: McCain didn't "contradict" the GOP's position on global warming. He simply stated his own view. Many Republicans have variant opinions on many issues.

What I support McCain in saying is: Maybe global warming is real, and maybe it's not. People disagree on whether evidence indicates global warming, or just natural cycles of the earth. But if it's possible to reduce greenhouse gasses, then why not do that? And that's the position McCain advocates.

Most of the "Right wing talking heads" who mock and ridicule global warming (Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, etc.) Have done anything BUT defend McCain.

Pull your head out of your partisan ass, and see the Republicans for what they truly are, a group of patriotic people with a wide range of opinions, rather than as the lock-step evil machine you like to pretend they are.

Even as YOU weave endless deceits to advance your liberal hatred of Republicans. Everything you allege Republicans to be, is every deceitful and malicious thing you have proven yourself to be, in your attempts to slander Republicans.
You manufacture these stereotypes of Republicans as perpetuators of stereotypes, even as you create false stereotypes of Republicans, and allege that they, not you, are the ones doing the stereotyping.

You want comedy gold? Just watch some of the parodies of Obama and Hillary going at each other, on Saturday Night Live.

Obama's gaffs with Rev. Wright alone could fill a season of SNL episodes.

No, I'm pretty sure that he's angling for the John the Baptist role.

works for me - we won't have to put up with him indefinitely.

nothing funnier than red x's.