You may find the answer you seek in a copy/paste of SoConPubbie’s post on another thread:
“So, while McCain is certainly not everything I wished he was and there are several problem areas that he has failed us on. The fact is, he is head and shoulders above ANYTHING the democrats have to offer.
“Here is McCain’s Recent History over the last 7 years:
1. Gang of Fourteen (Kept some of President Bush’s best judges from being presented for a vote)
2. McCain-Fiengold (Assault on Free Speech and Pro-Life groups and Gun-rights groups)
3. McCain-Kennedy (Amnesty for criminal Illegal Aliens)
4. McCain-Lieberman (50 cents a gallon tax)
5. Total support for global warming scam, including carbo cap and trade system.
6. Support for embryonic stem cell research (Murder of unborn babies).
7. Leaked top-secret information concerning CIA prisons in Europe
8. Wants to close Gitmo and give Terrorists access to our legal system.
9. F grade from Gun-Owners of America.
10. C- grade from NRA.
11. 60% score from American Conservative Union in 2006
12. Wants to bail out sub-prime losers (many of which are either illegal aliens or lied on thier applications) with US tax money.
13. Voted against President Bush’s tax cuts (called them tax-cuts for the rich)
14. Flirted with the idea of crossing over to the Dems in 2004.
Now you be the judge as to whether or not his principles match up enough with your principles and whether or not you can vote for him!
What you might want to add into your calculation is if you are willing to destroy the conservative nature of the GOP, the GOP itself, and more than likely, hasten the destruction of our nation.
There are two probably scenarios that will play out during the next four years:
1. A democrat is elected President and the GOP in both the House and Senate finally find their backbone and fight all things socialist that the Democrats would like to push through congress. This will guarantee a stalemate and the success of the agenda of the Left will be severly limited.
2. Our RINO McCain is elected and the benefit, as perceived by our congressmen/congresswomen, of standing up against socialist measures will be severely diminished as John McCain will be pushing most of the same socialist/liberal agenda including Global Warming (Kyoto II), Cap and Trade system, Illegal Alien Amnesty, some form of socialized health care where you and I are footing the bill for others, etc.
Just by McCain granting Amnesty, the GOP will be relegated to minority status for decades to come. The impact will be two-fold: first, 20-30 million+ illegal aliens who vote 70% for Democrats will be immediately dumped into the American Electorate thereby erasing the thin margins between Democrat and Republican voters. Secondly, by ignoring the strongly held principles of the base of the GOP, conservatives, he will have driven millions of conservatives from the party and also dis-engaged millions more.”
SoCon, your post is becoming very popular. :-)
From my own readings of this issue, it was due to the influence of the "Gang of 14" that President Bush's nominees for federal judgeships came to a vote, not the other way around. The gang of 14 came together for the purpose of demanding that the appointments come before the judiciary committee for an up or down vote instead of those appointments being sidelined. This is according to the information I read on this issue. So, what was the problem here? I thought conservatives would want Bush's appointments to be voted on, and not held up in committee?
As for numbers 2 through 12, and 14, I'll need to spend some time in researching all the facts for each one. It's amazing that with item 13 you have conveniently left out the rest of the story. John McCain was not opposed to the tax cuts. He was opposed to tax cuts without corresponding spending cuts. That is a completely different argument than just painting his as being against tax cuts.
I refuse to engage in knee-jerk reactionary commentary without the full picture in front of me. That is the tactic the left loves to use, and does not serve conservatives well. When all the information is not presented in an argument, and then the rest of the story comes to light to paint a different picture it gives the appearence there is dishonesty being perpetrated for political reasons. Dims excell at this tactic. I'm appalled that conservatives use it too.