In his article Will the GOP Contenders Break Their Suicide Pact?, Medved tries to make the case that all of the candidates, McCain included want the same basic things. For instance, Medved writes:
Everybody wants to halt illegal immigration into the United States.
This is, in one of Medved’s turns-of-phrase, deeply silly. You have to ignore McCain’s strident support for amnesty last summer, not once, but twice (after being slapped down by the American People) and the fact that he smeared those who opposed him as racists and nativists. Medved is either supremely gullible or he a dishonest shill for open borders.
In his blogpost How to Identify a "Real Conservative", Medved writes:
In other words, conservatives who know him best attest to McCain’s consistency, his character, and his Reaganite world-view. Those associates, enthusiastically promoting McCain’s candidacy, count for more than strident and angry talkers who know McCain not at all.
First, Medved cites the support of some of his fellow senators as decisive evidence that McCain is conservative. Medved is committing the logical fallacy of Appealing to Authority. We can cite others who disagree, if Medved wishes to play that game. Go to Mark Levin’s website to hear why Senators DeMint, Santorum & George Allen all emphatically reject McCain’s candidacy. Also note that conservative stalwarts Judge Robert Bork and Pat Toomey are if like mind.
Tom Delay has also spoken out against McCain.
KLo at National Review, writes:
In an interview with Mark Levin on Levin’s radio show Thursday night, Santorum went
so far as to call McCain “very, very dangerous for Republicans” on domestic policy. Santorum said: “I just have to tell you, as a leader, as someone who had to put these coalitions together, it was always hard and we very rarely on domestic policy had any help from the Senator from Arizona.”
Santorum told Levin: “The bottom line is that I served 12 years with him, 6 years in the United States Senate as leader, one of the leaders of the Senate — the number-3 leader — who had the responsibility of trying to put together the conservative agenda, and almost at every turn on domestic policy, John McCain was not only against us, but leading the charge on the other side.”
[…]
Although McCain has a largely pro-life voting record, Santorum — who led on pro-life and marriage issues in the Senate — cautioned against misunderstanding McCain’s public stance: “Not only was he wrong on embryonic-stem-cell research, but on a whole host of conservative issues, where he may have voted with us.” Santorum took radio listeners into the back-room workings of the Senate, emphasizing how the first step toward legislative success is finding time on the floor to discuss and vote on the issues: “That discussion is held in private, where you’re jostling and jockeying to get your legislation into the queue so that you can have your time on the floor to get something done. And I can tell you, when social-conservative issues were ever raised — whether it was marriage or abortion or a whole host of other issues — there were always the moderates who said ‘no, no, no, we can’t: they’re divisive, divisive, divisive.’ And more often than not, John McCain was . . . with them,” agreeing that these were divisive issues that the Senate should not bring to a vote.
“That’s wrong,” Santorum added, “and that gives me an insight into what he would really be like [on these issues] if he were president of the United States.”
This is what Medved means by ‘…idealistic elected officials who toil every day to put conservative principles into practice’? What a joke!
Further, we need not rely on the judgment of others here, be they Senators, Levin, Limbaugh, or, least of all, you. We have evaluated McCain’s record for ourselves and find it sorely lacking. For such an examination, see Levin’s article The Real McCain Record and KLo’s article A Conservative Case against McCain, both at National Review.
Second , as for the talkers how oppose McCain being ‘strident and angry’, I can only speak of Levin & Limbaugh. These guys are not angry, though one might say they are strident (passionate is more like it). They are deeply concerned that the RINOs are trying to hijack the Republican party and thereby deny Reagan-style conservative an effective voice in politics. Speaking of which, what of Medved’s smears and insults towards Romney? Why the anger and stridency? Perhaps Romney is a bit too conservative for your tastes? (I’m a Thompson man, myself; Romney being my second choice).
Third, if McCain is consistent, why has he feigned a switch on the immigration issue? If immigrating-reform isn’t a big issue, why did both Huck & McCain change their positions? Perhaps you see consistency in the fact that you know as well as we do that his change of heart on immigration is indeed false, so, in the end, he will still support amnesty.
Last, but certainly not least, is the absurd claim that McCain has a ‘Reaganite world-view’. Again, this is either ‘deeply silly’ or simply dishonest.
For instance, take tax cuts. In Will the GOP Contenders Break Their Suicide Pact?, Medved writes:
All of them (very much including John McCain) will fight to preserve the Bush tax cuts that have brought six years of economic growth and want to institute a vastly less burdensome and complex tax system….
Again, Medved is either gullible or dishonest. Today, McCain tells us he opposed the Bush tax cuts because they weren’t accompanying spending cuts. This is a blatant LIE, as documented by Human Events in their recent article John McCain's Top 10 Class-Warfare Arguments Against Tax Cuts. A couple of samples:
There’s one big difference between me and the others—I won’t take every last dime of the surplus and spend it on tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy. I’ll use the bulk of the surplus to secure Social Security far into the future to keep our promise to the greatest generation.
—McCain campaign commercial, January 2000.
I don’t think Bill Gates needs a tax cut. I think you and your parents do.
—Michigan State University rally, Feb. 20, 2000.
In his interview with Levin, Santorum noted that “We would have had a much bigger tax cut if it was not for John McCain.”
McCain also opposed repeal of the ‘Death Tax’.
McCain has, at least three times, reaffirmed his opposition to the Bush tax cuts: once with Lawrence Kudlow, once with Hannity & Colmes and once with Tim Russert.
Now, to be fair McCain claims (on H&C) he supports making the Bush tax cuts permanent (while still claiming he would vote against them if he had it to do over again), but I don't trust him for a number of reasons. First, I think it's clear he's simply engaging in election-year obfuscation, given his record. Second, he is likely to betray this 'pledge' to the Republican base. As Thomas Sowell has aptly put it:
Temperament is far more important for a president than for a candidate. A president has to be on an even keel 24/7, for four long years, despite crises that can break out anywhere in the world at any time.
John McCain trails the pack in the temperament department, with his volatile, arrogant, and abrasive know-it-all attitude. His track record in the Senate is full of the betrayals of Republican supporters that have been the party’s biggest failing over the years and its Achilles heel politically.
[...]
McCain’s betrayals include not only the amnesty bill but also the McCain-Feingold bill that violated the First Amendment for the illusion of “taking money out of politics.” His back-door deal with Democrats on judicial nominations also pulled the rug out from under his party leaders in the Senate.
The White House is not the place for a loose cannon.
Another important consideration in this regard is what would be necessary to make the Bush tax cuts permanent; determination, effort, ‘campaigning’ for the cause, and enduring the intransigent opposition of both the Democrat party and the Mainstream Media – all of which will require the expenditure of precious political capital.
A moments’ reflection shows the unlikelihood of McCain undertaking such an endeavor. McCain craves the adulation of both his Democrat colleagues and the Mainstream Media; and he often panders to them to get it. To believe, as Medved does, that he ‘…will fight to preserve the Bush tax cuts…’ is little more than wishful thinking at best and demagoguery at worst.
Medved believes McCain’s change of heart on taxes also. We know better.
In the same interview, Santorum gives further evidence refuting Medved’s fallacious claim:
On economic policy, he has come down not only against reductions in taxes, but he has come down on the side of government intervention into a whole variety of different industries — when it seems to be a popular thing to be on that side — and I think that makes us a lot less competitive in a world that is becoming more competitive.
Also consider that McCain recently reaffirmed his abiding opposition to drilling in ANWR.
And, if he had his way, McCain-Lieberman would hobble the US economy with global warming mandates. In the face of such contrary evidence, Medved writes in ‘Will the GOP Contenders Break Their Suicide Pact?’
- They all [including McCain] want to push the U.S. toward energy independence, and back the rapid development of nuclear power and other alternatives for that purpose, while avoiding hysterical over-reaction to environmental threats that would bring government intrusion into private life.
It must also be asked why, if McCain is such a reliable conservative, is he running on his biography as a war hero as opposed to his record? First, this is largely irrelevant to the presidency. The last candidate who ran such a campaign, John F. Kerry, did so to distract from his record. McCain is doing the same thing.
And last, it should give Medved pause that his two favorite candidates – McCain and Huckabee – also happen to be the candidates who are consistently given the most favorable treatment by the Mainstream Media. Should this at least raise a red flag? Apparently not.
KLo sums it up well:
For a movement that has spent a year pining for Ronald Reagan, John McCain is a very odd choice to settle on early. If conservatism is, as Mitt Romney said during a New Hampshire debate last Sunday night, a matter of temperament, John McCain isn’t a conservative.
Now let’s do an cursory inventory on McCain:
- Class Warfare Demagogue. Check.
- Anti-Corporate Demagogue. Check.
- Environmental Demagogue. Check.
- Illegal Immigration/Racial Demagogue. Check.
- Populist Demagogue/ally of trial lawyers. Check.
- Wants to close down Gitmo. Check.
- Wants to extend Geneva Convention protections and Constitutional rights to terrorists. Check.
Apparently, for Medved, this is what constitutes a ‘Reaganite world-view’. Thus, he makes it all to clear that he is not a reliable barometer for conservatism.