Sometimes I can’t believe my ears when I hear people whose politics run to the left run on about John McCain. “He’s not that bad,” they say, or “I could live with him as president.” Most often what you hear in Red Texas is this: “Well, he won’t be as bad as Bush was.”
“Is,” I keep reminding them, “he’s still president and McCain is still his lapdog.”
“Nooooo,” they exclaim, “McCain is a maverick. McCain won’t be another Bush.”
You have to ask yourself where these people get their information. Fox News seems to be out and I literally don’t speak to people who listen to Rush Limbaugh unless it is to answer their questions on directions to the Museum of the Confederacy.
So where?
Could it be the mainstream media? Is John McCain being remodeled and reformed in the mainstream media in the image of some fantastic embodiment of Republican perfection? I have to say I think so. John McCain is being reformulated and repackaged for centrist American consumption.
A maverick. Unbeholden to the corporations. Not Bush’s man.
Lies. Duplicitous lies.
And now these lies are starting to be considered by moderate Democrats who support Hillary Clinton for president. If Hillary Clinton doesn’t get the nomination, they are saying they will vote for McCain in the fall. Or 28% of them will, anyway.
At first blush, when I heard this news, I thought that these Clinton supporters, these Hillarycrats, were simply making idle threats at best, or considered McCain as the most viable alternative between he and Barack Obama, at worst.
I am now characteristically opting for the worst-case scenario.
Now the mainstream media is making it very hard, you know, hard for truth to reach the ears of Americans considering a vote for McCain. And once word reaches them, it’s very difficult to get past the first word that comes to their minds when the name “McCain” is uttered, and that word is “maverick”.
Well get a hold of these facts and figures:
John “Maverick” McCain voted with the Bush Regime 95% of the time (when he voted) in 2007. 95%. That’s more than our own junior senator, John “Rubberstamp” Cornyn. True enough, John McCain has flip-flopped on so many issues it is hard to figure out just what his opinion is on things, but I tend to settle on his final flop rather than his original flip.
Like how he flopped a couple of months ago on the Intelligence Authorization Bill. The bill that forbids government interrogation by waterboarding. McCain, himself the recipient of government-sponsored torture, unbelievably voted against this bill that passed 51-45. McCain, who was so vehemently opposed to US torture of its prisoners because of fear of reprisals from other governments in how they treat our soldiers, resolutely spoke out against waterboarding in the past.
But now he favors government-sponsored torture.
In his attempt to distance himself from Bush in the Katrina disaster, McCain recently said that, referring presumably to Air Force One he “would have ordered the plane landed at the nearest air force base, and I would have been over here . . . OK?” That would have been fine, except that The Huffingtonpost, found photographs taken of McCain on the day after Katrina hit New Orleans, in a Hillaryesque photo op, McCain found himself meeting Air Force One and George Bush where he landed to present McCain with a birthday cake. It was John McCain’s birthday. The president was giving him a cake, and apparently not listening to McCain’s exhortations for him to get back on that plane and get over to New Orleans.
McCain is no friend of Katrina victims. He voted against a $28 billion appropriation for hurricane relief. He voted against a 5-month program to put Katrina victims on a Medicaid emergency health care.
Economy? Iraq? Has anyone who is seriously thinking of voting for John McCain stopped to think that he is in lockstep with the Bush Regime on these issues? McCain actually now wants to extend and deepen Bush’s tax cuts to the richest Americans. Tax cuts in wartime. McCain sees a US presence in Iraq to rival our presence in South Korea. Decades.
This is the person Hillarycrats will opt for if their candidate fails to get their party’s nomination? What kind of person is that? Obviously, quite obviously, this kind of person is more “heart” than “head”. Common sense tells any Democrat that John McCain is simply unacceptable as a voting option. Common sense and rational thought.
Things that I think these 28% of Clinton supporters clearly lack.
“Is,” I keep reminding them, “he’s still president and McCain is still his lapdog.”
“Nooooo,” they exclaim, “McCain is a maverick. McCain won’t be another Bush.”
You have to ask yourself where these people get their information. Fox News seems to be out and I literally don’t speak to people who listen to Rush Limbaugh unless it is to answer their questions on directions to the Museum of the Confederacy.
So where?
Could it be the mainstream media? Is John McCain being remodeled and reformed in the mainstream media in the image of some fantastic embodiment of Republican perfection? I have to say I think so. John McCain is being reformulated and repackaged for centrist American consumption.
A maverick. Unbeholden to the corporations. Not Bush’s man.
Lies. Duplicitous lies.
And now these lies are starting to be considered by moderate Democrats who support Hillary Clinton for president. If Hillary Clinton doesn’t get the nomination, they are saying they will vote for McCain in the fall. Or 28% of them will, anyway.
At first blush, when I heard this news, I thought that these Clinton supporters, these Hillarycrats, were simply making idle threats at best, or considered McCain as the most viable alternative between he and Barack Obama, at worst.
I am now characteristically opting for the worst-case scenario.
Now the mainstream media is making it very hard, you know, hard for truth to reach the ears of Americans considering a vote for McCain. And once word reaches them, it’s very difficult to get past the first word that comes to their minds when the name “McCain” is uttered, and that word is “maverick”.
Well get a hold of these facts and figures:
John “Maverick” McCain voted with the Bush Regime 95% of the time (when he voted) in 2007. 95%. That’s more than our own junior senator, John “Rubberstamp” Cornyn. True enough, John McCain has flip-flopped on so many issues it is hard to figure out just what his opinion is on things, but I tend to settle on his final flop rather than his original flip.
Like how he flopped a couple of months ago on the Intelligence Authorization Bill. The bill that forbids government interrogation by waterboarding. McCain, himself the recipient of government-sponsored torture, unbelievably voted against this bill that passed 51-45. McCain, who was so vehemently opposed to US torture of its prisoners because of fear of reprisals from other governments in how they treat our soldiers, resolutely spoke out against waterboarding in the past.
But now he favors government-sponsored torture.
In his attempt to distance himself from Bush in the Katrina disaster, McCain recently said that, referring presumably to Air Force One he “would have ordered the plane landed at the nearest air force base, and I would have been over here . . . OK?” That would have been fine, except that The Huffingtonpost, found photographs taken of McCain on the day after Katrina hit New Orleans, in a Hillaryesque photo op, McCain found himself meeting Air Force One and George Bush where he landed to present McCain with a birthday cake. It was John McCain’s birthday. The president was giving him a cake, and apparently not listening to McCain’s exhortations for him to get back on that plane and get over to New Orleans.McCain is no friend of Katrina victims. He voted against a $28 billion appropriation for hurricane relief. He voted against a 5-month program to put Katrina victims on a Medicaid emergency health care.
Economy? Iraq? Has anyone who is seriously thinking of voting for John McCain stopped to think that he is in lockstep with the Bush Regime on these issues? McCain actually now wants to extend and deepen Bush’s tax cuts to the richest Americans. Tax cuts in wartime. McCain sees a US presence in Iraq to rival our presence in South Korea. Decades.
This is the person Hillarycrats will opt for if their candidate fails to get their party’s nomination? What kind of person is that? Obviously, quite obviously, this kind of person is more “heart” than “head”. Common sense tells any Democrat that John McCain is simply unacceptable as a voting option. Common sense and rational thought.
Things that I think these 28% of Clinton supporters clearly lack.
1 comment:
Hal, this has happened before. In 1984 the miniscule Communist Workers Party supported Jesse Jackson for the Democratic nomination because he was supposedly heading in the correct direction politically. When Jackson flamed out, they wound up supporting Democrat Walter Mondale, even though he was farther to the Right than Jackson and he lost anyway. Eventually they realized that they'd completely lost their way and the CWP just ceased to exist.
Much the same thing, albeit on a larger scale is happening to those Hillary supporters. They start by cozying up to the Right Wing media because "they're the only ones giving Hillary a fair shake"--without stopping to think how bizarre this is. As an alcoholic insists, "Look, it's alright, I can stop anytime I want." So if Hillary doesn't get the nomination they can support McCain with a clear conscience because, as one of the Jesse James Gang self-servingly put it, "We was drove to it."
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