Posted on 12/31/2007 2:06:04 AM PST by iowamark
In preparation for a John McCain presidential run, I clipped out what is perhaps the seminal article on McCain’s transformation from a Goldwater conservative to a maverick quasi-Democrat during the 2000 campaign and the early Bush years. Jonathan Chait’s assessment of just how far McCain had gone to the left in the April 29, 2002 issue of The New Republic stood out even at the time. I Googled it a few years later, and saved the full text. It is no longer available on TNR’s website.
The piece is heavy on speculation of a McCain presidential run as a Democrat. That issue has been discussed in this campaign. But it also sets the context in which these rumors swirled, laying out factual reasons for why John McCain (D-AZ) made sense. McCain was the chief Republican enabler of the Democrat-led Senate not just on campaign finance, but on taxes, health care, CAFE standards, guns, global warming, and corporate governance. People who were not active in politics in the first year of the Bush presidency may wonder “Why all the fuss?” about McCain. This article is why.
McCain denies ever considering a party switch, but he certainly did allow his aides, including then-Democrats John Weaver and Marshall Wittmann, to flirt with the idea:
John Weaver hunches his angular frame over a Styrofoam cup of coffee in the basement cafeteria of the United States Senate and tries to explain what might seem–to an outsider–his peculiar political loyalties. Once a loyal Republican strategist who directed the presidential aspirations of ber-conservative Phil Gramm and helped plot John McCain’s maverick primary run in 2000, he has since reregistered as a Democrat and severed consulting ties to all Republicans except McCain, for whom he still serves as chief strategist. “I only work for Democrats now,” he tells me. Noticing that he has overlooked the party affiliation of his most prominent advisee, I helpfully add: “And John McCain.” Weaver shrugs his shoulders and grins, “Oh, right.”
On his transformation during the 2000 campaign:
Pretty soon McCain was veering off in directions nobody could have foreseen even a few months before, openly pointing out that Bush’s tax cut favored the rich and attacking influential religious conservatives like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as “forces of evil.” As Marshall Wittmann, who advised McCain during the primary, puts it, “Ideologically, we all changed.”
Note: Wittmann was an ur-weblogger in 2001, blogging at “The Bull Moose,” which I read daily. A McCain independent run was a prominent hobbyhorse of his, and he was later hired back as McCain’s Senate communications director.
The prominent issues on which McCain sided with Democrats and against Republicans are as long as my arm, including a much-overlooked attack on Second Amendment rights:
The degree to which McCain has abandoned contemporary conservatism is reflected in the legislative program he has championed since Bush took office. Most notably, of course, he shepherded campaign finance reform–an effort that put him in close cooperation with Democrats in Congress. McCain also collaborated with liberal Democrats John Edwards and Ted Kennedy on a patients’ bill of rights; with Charles Schumer on more widespread sale of generic prescription drugs; with Ernest Hollings to put federal employees in charge of airport security–all of which set him against fierce business lobbying. And he teamed up with Evan Bayh to promote AmeriCorps, an effort Bush later co-opted with his own smaller AmeriCorps boost.
But perhaps most amazing has been McCain’s willingness to take stands even many Democrats are afraid of. He voted against Bush’s tax cut, the centerpiece of the new president’s agenda. Along with John Kerry, he sponsored legislation to raise automobile emissions standards, and he paired with Joe Lieberman to try to force Bush to reduce greenhouse gases in compliance with the Kyoto accord. Also with Lieberman, McCain has proposed forcing people who buy firearms at gun shows to undergo background checks–closing the “gun-show loophole”–even as most Democrats shy away from any form of gun control. He has infuriated the gambling industry by proposing to ban wagering on college sports. And along with Carl Levin, he has co-sponsored a bill to force companies that deduct executive stock options from their taxes to disclose the cost on their financial statements–another effort few Democrats have been willing to join.
It was no wonder that,
on high-profile issues, McCain’s legislative coalitions consist entirely, or almost entirely, of Democrats.
McCain likes to paint himself as the true economic conservative in the race. Here’s what he was saying on this just a few years ago, sounding more like Upton Sinclair than Ronald Reagan:
In the last year though his ideology has grown coherently progressive. “We have had regulatory agencies always to curb the abuses or potential abuses of the capitalist system,” he said earlier this year on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “This is not a totally laissez-faire country.”
And here is his dodgy, conflicted rhetoric on Life:
Moreover, it has gotten hard to discern to what degree McCain is actually anti-abortion at all. At one point during his primary run, he told a reporter that “certainly in the short term or even the long term I would not support the repeal of Roe v. Wade.” Another time, when asked what he would do if his daughter sought an abortion, McCain replied that he’d leave the final decision to her. In both instances, he restated his anti-abortion position after the ensuing uproar, but polls showed that voters believed he was pro-choice. In the last year McCain reversed himself and came out in favor of stem-cell research. So while it’s hard to figure out where he stands, the best guess is that he remains personally against abortion but neutral, or even opposed to, making it illegal.
None of this is entirely new. But since June of 2004 (when McCain did an about-face from his role as Kerry surrogate-in-chief against the Swiftvets, and decided to campaign actively for the President), he has done a surprisingly good job of cloaking his Senate record. For months, we have heard him talk about nothing except the war and earmarks. In this topsy-turvy campaign, it’s easy for Republicans to get caught up in the other candidates’ flaws and forget why they distrusted McCain.
This piece is a vivid reminder why, in living color. I’ve reposted it in full below so you can judge for yourself.
Read it before you vote.
UPDATE from Hugh: I have deleted the Chaitt article as I don't see a reprint permission from TNR or Jonathan Chait. If we get the OK, I will be pleased to repost it.
The entire premise of this article was, by its own admission, totally wrong. Why would anyone put anyone buy into the “facts” that lead it to that flawed speculation?
This reads oddly like a light on substance hit-piece written by a Flip Romney sycophant...
The entire premise of this article was, by its own admission, totally wrong. Why would anyone buy into the “facts” that lead it to that flawed speculation?
This reads oddly like a light on substance hit-piece written by a Flip Romney sycophant...
It seems a bit cobbled-together and rickety. McCain is as deserving of criticism as anyone, but this comes off as someone having a theme, and then looking for the facts to fit it.
I did read an article addressing that very issue long ago, but don't have a pointer to it.
The story involved the Senate Ethics Committee, Minority Leader Bob Dole, the Keating Five (Lincoln S&L scandal) and a tight re-election race faced by Jesse Helms (R-NC) in '90. Based on McCain's strong emotional reaction, as related by an anonymous witness who attended a GOP Senate leadership meeting, it appeared as though McCain believed fellow Republicans had stabbed him in the back.
The article did make a good, though circumstantial, case for a possible motivation for McCain wanting to get revenge on Republicans.
Just say NO to RINO Rudy and his liberal B.S. ways.
Support for: Abortion
Gun control
Amnesty for illegals
the homosexual agenda
big government
special rights for homosexual
govt. funding for abortions
“The piece is heavy on speculation of a McCain presidential run as a Democrat.”
It’s not speculation anymore, McCain is running for president as a Democrat.
Well, I didn’t say it was speculation, actually...
I thought I saw a copy at GOA, but couldn’t find it.
They don’t have much good to say about him at all:
http://www.gunowners.org/mccaintb.htm
McCain has a record of working with Democrats and not supporting the policies of the president from the tax cut in 2001 to “torture” of terrorists.
He’s changed his tune lately with the “surge.”
I’m scared about the beltway types praising McCain and in the back of my mind is the idea that insiders (maybe even the president) had to promise McCain the nomination in 2008.
Stop McCain anyway you know how.
I’d vote Romney in New Hampshire if I lived there just for that purpose.
Seems like a good summary of what McPain has done. He’s hasn’t been a conservative for years.
I remember the Keating 5, I watched the hearings, lead by the Clintons very own lawyer Bob Bennet. I could list a very long list of vengeful and a finger in the eye jabs out of John McCain before ever having read this article.
The haughty spite of Hillary Clinton is no different than the I AM owed from John McCain. Both have used US to feather their own nests as though the purpose of them was written in the stars.
Looks like a sure sign that Hugh and Mitt have seen the internal polls and are not at all comfortable with the national polling.
McCain and Stem Cell Research Round-up
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: THE ULTIMATE "RHINESTONE HERO"
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: THE ULTIMATE "RHINESTONE HERO" Part II
U.S. Sen. John McCain is no War Hero
John McCain: The Manchurian Candidat
McCain Is Booed by Labor Activists
McCain Rides to Kerry's Rescue: "John Kerry is Not Weak on Defense" (Today Show alert)
John McCain SCREAMS AT 9/11 FSA MEMBERS FOR OPPOSING HIS BILL TO GIVE AMNESTY FOR ILLEGALS
A number of articles on McCain. (some the same as above)
McCain Seeks to Change California Primary
McCain/Soros by Rabbi Areyh Spero
Soros' "Reform" (an article about Soros‘ instrumental hand in McCain/Feingold)
Not Child‘s Play [McCain/Schumer bill could effect FR?]
McCain's Letter (McCain aligns with Global Enviro activists)
The Turning Point on Global Warming (McCain and Lieberman Op-Ed Alert)
Climate bill sets stage for debate (Sens. McCain, Obama, and Lieberman join forces)
McCain: Global warming is fact, must be addressed [hurl alert]
McCain Looked into Caucusing with Democrats
McCain Still Disliked by Fiscal Conservatives (Club For Growth)
John McCain Goes Left for Money
McCain, Obama Make Deal on Financing
Sens. Snowe, Collins to head Maine exploratory committee for McCain
Double Talk Express. McCain in his own words. VIDEO
More YOUTUBE - McCain On Abortion (UH OH! YouTube Has a Video of Him in 1999)
The following links posted by raving utter and lifted by me…
How Cindy McCain was outed for drug addiction(stole drugs from the American Voluntary Medical Team)
John McCain: Hypocrite by Mark R. Levin
John McCain and the Kemper Marley organised crime network
McCain and his Chicom Connections: Posts #17 and #18 by Calpernia
More links I found...
TEN REASONS NOT TO SUPPORT MCCAIN (Free Republic thread from 2000)
It’s posted with the original version of this article, on Patrick Ruffini’s website.
http://www.patrickruffini.com/2007/12/30/flashback-the-real-john-mccain/
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