Posted on 02/23/2008 10:56:29 AM PST by Bob J
Ever since Super Tuesday a super debate has been raging on FR concerning John McCain. I was never a McCain supporter, in fact I penned the post Super Tuesday post "Official FR Drinking Thread" so we could together drown our common disappointments into oblivion.
FReepers seem to be moving into three distinct groups. The first are those that have always supported McCain, a lot or partially. There are those that don't like McCain but are willing to support him because they believe they will get some of what they want or to defeat what the see as the more critical danger, Obama or Clinton. The there's the third group, those that viscerally dislike McCain and vow never to vote for him for any reason.
The actions and motivation for support from the first two groups seem obvious...they would rather see McCain in the White House than a dem. But for the life of me I cannot understand some of the actions of the third.
Allow me to explain.
I understand you dislike McCain and the reasons why. He is far too liberal on many issues, he has stabbed conservatives in the back several times and he is too cozy with the dems. These are all defensible reasons to not vote for him or to vote third party and you have every right to vote as you see fit and for whatever reasons you hold. What I don't understand is why some here are making such concerted efforts to dissuade others from voting for or supporting him.
As flawed as McCain is there is no way a logical case can be made that we would be better off under Obama or Hillary (O&H). Even on most issues where McCain is closer to the left than to us, O&H are much farther to the left than he is and would do much more damage than McCain. On the issues where he is not, the WOT, taxes, abortion, etc., the differences are stark and this does not even take into count extended issues like judicial appointments.
So why are you working so hard, so viscerlly, so nasty, to turn votes against McCain? If you truly feel as you do than go sit out November or cast your vote for your 3rd party candidate. That makes sense. What doesn't make sense is why you push for a McCain and GOP loss.
It may be as simple as "misery loves company". It may be that you validate your own position by getting others to believe as you do. It may be that there are some dem propaganda plants on FR. I don't know but I sure would like to and I know others do as well.
Ever since so called realists have taken over the party, the Repubs have been losing. McCain is the biggest loser of them all.
You don't say! How many media pukes vote in Republican primaries?
-ccm
The hissyfitters don't have a leg to stand on because they are working to elect Barack Obama. To pretend there is a rational conservative case for doing so is just pretending. There isn't, it is utter foolishness and disregard for the country's interests. The most they ever allege is that it might help out a wing of the party, if the country catches hell. Which we rightly recognize as treasonous hyperpartisanship when the left engages in it, e.g. over the war.
Well, you've finally said something that makes sense. Breathing is a basic function of the brain stem, not requiring logic or thought and that describes your writing to a tee!
McCain Lieberman is the most important issue on that list because it is current, and I perceive it as a threat that McCain is going to make life miserable for conservatives whether he wins or not, so we may as well in line behind him and take what crumbs he may throw our way.
McCain hates conservatives and blames them for his loss in 2000. He has been making plans to marginalize the conservatives in the GOP ever since, starting with McCain/Feingold. But the most egregious scam that McCain has perpetrated is the use of Common Sense Issues PAC that is financed by his good friend Carl Lindner and run by a man named Patrick Davis. The PAC is known for running expensive push poll campaigns and they were used this time to take out the GOP candidates on the issues that would appeal to social conservatives. In other words, McCain used this PAC to support Huckabee and stir up the evangelicals against Giuliani, Romney and Thompson. Huckabee claims to have no control over them, but that still is not clear. When Huckabee asked them to stop their negative push polls they refused and even changed their name to Trust Huckabee.
Well .. FR learned during 2000 - the easiest way to stop the newbies is - DO NOT REPLY TO THEIR MESSAGES.
Most of the time they just try to stir up trouble - if people refuse to reply - where is their argument - POOOOFF!
I never could understand why it was so difficult for people to get this message. Just because somebody posts some stupid or irrational statement - it doesn’t mean it requires any answer.
Also .. has anybody figured out yet that they do this just to watch you all explode - I mean - this is the very same game they played in 2000 - they would drop a bomb-like statement to watch the conservatives go ballistic - while they stand back and laugh at our antics.
Good grief people .. lets be grown-ups and act like it. Besides .. laughing at their irrational statements really gets them mad as hell - and then we get our turn to laugh at them.
H E L L O !! Is anybody else able to figure this out besides me ..??
How many media pukes vote in Republican primaries
Welcome aboard, FRiend. The line is very long, though. LOL
See my post above-McCain would hob nob with Dems as he has always done pushing liberal policies and forcing Repubs in congress to go along with it. We can at least expect Repubs to oppose Obama as Clinton was opposed...how is this an illogical argument?
Democrat-Lite is an absolutely unsupportable position; when they loses out to full-fledged Democrat, the Democrat-Lite RINOs conclude they need to run further left.
One of the big reasons that leftists win is that there is, nowadays, no real ideology to contradict them. When Democrats propose some $X billion dollar giveaway program, the Democrat-Lites suggest that we should instead give away some smaller amount. Nobody argues that the program will in fact do more harm than good, and so the best outcome--even for the recipients--would be giving away $0.
One major problem conservatives have, and have had for years, is that they get portrayed as Luddites who are trying to impede progress. Indeed, for all practical purposes, that's what RINOs are. They don't provide any particular opposition to liberalism; just an annoying impediment.
First of all Bob, it is very condensending to challenge folks who don’t want to vote for a man who has helped bilk seniors out of their life savings from his potion in the Senate of the United States.
It is even more condesending to challenge them for not wanting to vote for a man who advocated that the MIA issue be laid to rest, so trade with Hanoi could commence.
It is amazingly condescending to challenge folks for not wanting to vote for a man who was stupid enough to co-sponsor (with his own name on it, no less), the McCain/Feingold bill, a bitch slap to the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
It is incredible to me, to see anyone challenge folks for not wanting to vote for a man who wanted to reward criminality as it applies to between 25 and 35 million foreign nationals on our soil in the United States. These folks are bleeding this nation dry, and John McCain cared so little about it that he actually reasoned that changing their illegal status to a legal status would ‘FIX EVERYTHING’. The man is a complete idiot on this issue.
It got so bad that John McCain hired a former staffer to the President of Mexico to advise him on U.S./Mexican relations, and help him devise policy. This person immediately came up with what he called “a Mexico First” policy, and when challenged on this fact, McCain actually defended the guy.
When our President was trying to face down the democrats over judicial appointments, John McCain short-circuited the effort by joining with the gang of fourteen. This adversely affected appointments to the ranks of federal judges across this nation.
This doesn’t even touch on the fact that for the last decade John McCain practically lived on the sets of Sunday morning talking head shows short-circuiting every Republican initiative he possibly could. from the postition that he knew better than anyone on every single issue. He was the poster boy “conservative” on those shows, insulting us anew with each embarassing performance.
Today John delivers speeches that are riddled with liberal buzzwords. For instance, his big policy speech from April 2007 on his energy goals wavered into liberal territory nine times addressing 24 catch phrase words or terms on 28 separate instances. Terms like carbon capture, carbon trades, greenhouse gases, global warming... these are the terms of John McCain, not Barak Obama. McCain essentially buys off on the Kyoto Protocals and wants to implement as much of it as he can, while smart enough not to do it officially (at least I think).
Despite all this, you can’t see any other reason why some of us would refuse to back McCain and ask others to do so, other than that it’s an ego trip for us, we need to have others join us to help buttress our fragile mental faculties or some other equally insulting nonsense.
What do you call folks who recognize the character of those who help defraud Seniors, and trash them for it? Mentally unstable? Insecure? In need of an attitude adjustment?
What do you call folks who recognize the character of those who pass laws that infringe on our Constitutional Amendments, and trash them for it? Irrational? Unreasonable? Sanctamoneous?
What do you call folks who recognize the character of those who advocated for the MIA issue being laid to rest, and trash them for it? UnAmerican? Anti-Military? Myopic?
I could go right down the line on these issues and you would agree with me in every instance that people are not wrong to oppose any of the things John McCain has done that I just listed. And then you’d turn right around and tell me that it’s just wrong not to vote for him.
Bob, you can reread your post and look at those comments you made about folks who will not support John. And after you have, realize they do not apply to them. They apply to you to the power of ten.
You folks are incredibly irrational on this matter.
When confronted on the issue of who will advocate for conservatism if John is president you folks don’t have an answer. When John reaches out to the democrats they won’t oppose him. Enough in his own party won’t opposed him to block his desires. And then there’s John himself. He and the Republican party leadership will be trashing conservatives in the exact same manner you have here. “You folks are fringe wing-nuts.” It is appauling that any person who calls themself a conservative could decide that being a part of this would be a great day for conservatism. And that being the case, how in the sam hell could it be a good day for the nation we supposedly love.
We have come to the place where we can watch a man disect Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and then advocate for him to be President. And then turn our backs on loyal nation loving citizens who dispise what the man stands for, and insult them to their faces.
Tell me Bob, if running against a democrat for the office of the president, what single thing could a person do that John McCain hasn’t done, for you to be unable to vote for them? Haven’t you become the exact model of a Clinton supporter, only from the almighty (R) side of the isle? And then you come here to denigrate us.
There is a sickness in the land...
For four years under a John McCain presidency, the democrats will slander conservatives at will, even saying that they won’t even agree with one of their own, when John pulls what he will. During that time many Republicans will do the same thing, advocating for John. The Republican Party will trash them. John McCain will trash them. The media will trash them.
Sounds like an eventuality I can’t help to put in place. I oppose this scenario with every fiber of my being.
I will not be a part of surrendering to the leftist love fest that is certain to follow a McCain victory.
I would rather have an enemy to focus on and oppose, than an enemy that many of my team want to serve. I will not become a Clinton groupie!
If this turns into a place where “McCain, Day in Pictures” thread are fequent, “Pray for McCain” threads vs “Pray for our Nation” threads... it will have proven my point.
If John McCain wins the Presidency, it will be the end of movement conservatism, and the dawn of the age of the theory of conservatism, for it will not longer be an operating ideology in practice here in the homeland.
(2) made no difference because it didn't pass, was urged by Bush, blame him too. Practical effect, nil.
(3) There is no patient bill of rights, it failed, see Dem debate where the Brett girl named it his greatest accomplishment. Bad idea, but practical effect, nil.
(4) Newt is looking for much the same, but not advisable, practical effect nil, pres isn't going to go along with Kyoto stuff.
It is all chickenfeathers, in the military euphemism, cleaned up for FR standards. McCain has been a legislator for 25 years, legislators can't pass anything without being bipartisan because that is the genius of Madison's system. Too partisan things are still attempted, they routinely die, all they do is position pols ideologically. The remainder of the charge amounts to, McCain is a squish not RWR. Duh, so is Bush, who was with him on half your cherry picked list and much else that riles conservatives, besides. Most importantly immigration, which is the only non-chickenfeathers issue really divding McCain from conservatives. There he is just right where Bush was and is.
We fear that a McCain presidency will set the conservative movement back for many, many years. Many of us think that the conservative movement will recover quicker with a Dem in office.
Are you a conservative who is new to politics or have you just been real happy with our contenders for the last twenty years?
The reality of it is that many of us have figured it out and realize that we’ll be handed this dilemma every four years until we refuse to fold to the dilemma.
LOL. little wet noise kids will always act like little wet noise kids!
You know, a lot of the Obama voters are saying that Hillary too old, well what do you think that they are going to say about McCain? The Obama people weren’t even born during Vietnam.
The only Republican candidate that had any chance of winning those voters was Giuliani because the younger voters saw him in action during 9/11.
And there isn't anything conservative about it. Conservatism is not a flag you can wave around and do anything for. Conservatism is about principles, and among those principles are duty and responsibility and realism, and it nowhere authorizes sacrificing the good of your country or the fate of innocent people, to your own political power.
That is instead called Machiavellism or ends justifies the means thinking, and it is in flat contradiction to everything conservatism stands for.
I just don't see voting for McCain and expecting a different result, if he does win. It just isn't going to happen. McCain will continue to be McCain.
(1) his assault on the First Amendment with his Campaign Finance Reform, which just happened to benefit him greatly in the current election cycle, and
(2) his persistence in trying to get amnesty for 12-60 million illegals, then his lying about it. His co-hort Lindsey Graham calling those who opposed it bigots didn't help.
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