Posted on 01/31/2008 6:44:15 AM PST by Brices Crossroads
Just ... months ago, the 2008 presidential contest seemed predetermined. ...Giuliani and Hillary Clinton were far ahead... .... Sen. Clinton was all but declared the foreordained winner a year in advance.
But not now. [snip]
The result of all this has been that while Hillary still polls ahead of the surging Obama in most states, in hypothetical general-election polls she runs behind Republican frontrunner, Sen. John McCain.
End of story?
Hardly. In reaction to McCain’s own surge and the Republican windfall, the conservative base went ballistic. Soon a Republican civil war broke out over how best to lose the election.
Despite McCain’s 82-percent career ranking by the American Conservative Union, and his support for balanced budgets, an end to pork-barrel spending and earmarks, strong support for the war, and expressed regret over once supporting the Bush illegal immigration reform package, McCain was branded by the conservative media as a sellout and a near liberal. Not to mention that he was supposedly too old and hot-tempered to be the Republican nominee. The more McCain was discovered not to be a perfect conservative, the more he was accused of not even being a good one.
Even stranger, the various Republican candidates began invoking Ronald Reagan...
Were conservatives supposed to forget that a maverick Reagan raised some taxes, signed an illegal-alien amnesty bill, expanded government, appointed centrist Supreme Court justices, advocated nuclear disarmament, sold arms to Iran, and pulled out of Lebanon — but to remember only that John McCain was not for the original Bush tax cuts or once supported the administration’s offer of a quasi-amnesty?
[snip]
November’s vote may hinge on whether moderates and liberals are nauseated enough by the Clintons...to ... vote for a decorated Republican war hero — that is, if his own flag-waving party doesn’t destroy him first.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
Had you ever listened to Rush, you would know how foolish you are. Rush has never called Bush conservative. No wonder you support McHitlery.
"In the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe vs. Wade, which would then force X number of women in American to undergo illegal and dangerous operations." - John McCain
Really?
McCain is far from the ideal nominee, but he is conservative most of the time. And on issues like immigration, the grass roots can overcome him just as it overcame George W. Bush last year.
Now that ain’t fair to go around quoting John McCain unless your doing it to praise his holiness.
Yes. I have listened to Rush. I don’t listen to him all the time. I have a job. I have heard him criticize Bush, but I have never heard the level of vitriol he hurls at McCain (like the nasty little nickname you post for McCain). I don’t listen to him in order to know what to think. And I disagree with him sometimes.
I never heard of Rush before 1988, when he burst on the scene supporting Bush 41, who betrayed conservatism with his”Read my lips” tax hike from 28% to 31% , which led directly to Clinton, who raised it from 31% to 39%. Guess how the “great liberal” McCain voted. He voted AGAINST the Bush tax hike and AGAINST the Clinton tax hike. He voted for all of the Reagan tax cuts (both the 25 % reduction in 1981 and the rate cut from 70% to 28% in 1986 (50% to 28% on earned income), which were accompanied by spending restraints passed by Phil Gramm (Gramm-Rudman) Gramm is another notorious liberal (with a 95% ACU rating) who is supporting McCain._
True, McCain opposed Bush43’s measly, temporary tax cut , because it had no spending restraints whatsoever. I think he should have voted for it, but I do not think him unprincipled for opposing it, especially when you look at his entire fiscal record over a 25 year career. And he is on record now as favoring making the Bush tax cut permanent.
And if we are talking about foolish, you live in California and call me foolish....
I don’t expect to convince you. Your mind is closed. But the facts are the facts. McCain is no liberal in spite of what you have been told.
If you have read this thread, I think you will see that your pro-McCain views are in a minority here. I am a former Thompson supporter and consider myself a very mainstream conservative. I’ve voted for every GOP nominee for President since Ronald Reagan.
That being said, like many of us in this forum, I am also a conservative first and a Republican second. A fluke of circumstances, terribly weak candidates, MSM fawning, and a substantial minority of moderate to liberal, misled, and/or uninformed GOP primary voters have conspired to make Sen. McCain the presumptive GOP nominee. It should be noted that he has managed to become the frontrunner of the party while losing 2/3 of GOP voters in almost every primary state.
John McCain not only supported and promoted amnesty for 10 to 20 million or more illegal aliens, he CONTINUES to do so with a wink and a nod to the liberal media and editorial boards. I have no doubt that if he becomes President, in addition to sabotaging conservatives at every turn, he will DESTROY both the GOP AND the country by legalizing these 20 million plus illegals PLUS the 80 to 100 million more immigrants who will then arrive soon thereafter via chain migration and “family reunification”. This doesn’t even address the tens of millions more children of these illegal aliens.
The results of Sen. McCain’s policy would be the demographic destruction of conservatism and in fact the entire culture of the country as we have previously known it. Iraq, abortion, and spending are also irrelevant if you no longer have a country, and his continuing implicit and explicit support for amnesty is a DEALBREAKER for me and should be for any true conservative. It’s not simply a matter of SAYING “The people don’t trust us” and “I will secure the borders first” (a hollow promise in any event given his clear disdain for even doing the rudimentary things necessary to do so such as building a fence) He needs to ACKNOWLEDGE that our opposition is legitimate, ADDRESS our opposition substantively, MAKE SPECIFIC PROMISES that he will not foist his destructive views on us, and stop treating the 80 percent or so of Republicans that oppose him on this crucial issue as a bunch of racists and yahoos.
The fact that he was for the “surge”, is nominally pro-life, and against excessive spending are nice but SECONDARY to me as a mainstream conservative. On the most important issues, from taxes to judges to immigration to the environment, he is a complete and total liberal panderer.
That being said, I would further add that if McCain is the GOP nominee, and there is any chance of having a united GOP against Hildebeat in November, given his track record, the onus would be on HIM to make amends with conservatives, NOT vice-versa. HE has to show that he would sincerely change from being the “Anti-conservative” he has been since 2000, and that he truly UNDERSTANDS and RESPECTS why most conservatives hold him in such low regard. He will have to do something he has shown a complete unwillingness to do - namely LISTEN to opposing views even if he disagrees with them and work WITH conservatives instead of AGAINST us.
The reality is that Rush and Sean Hannity are not causing the dissension - they are merely REFLECTING the dissension and disenchantment that we conservatives have with McCain. And it should also be noted that Both Sean and Rush’s views on substantive issues are far closer to those of most Republicans on most major issues than John McCain’s views are.
So far, McCain has done NOTHING to mend fences. He has instead shown every indication that he will STILL push for an amnesty bill which will destroy the country, will create a coalition with Democrats and RINO’s rather than work with conservatives, and spend the next 4 years continuing to vindictively sabotage every conservative initiative that may come up. Even on Judges we’re almost certain to get Kennedys and O’Connors instead of Scalias and Alitos.
As horrible as it is to contemplate, like many other conservatives, I feel that at this point the prospect of 4 years of a destructive, liberal Democratic President may in fact be the lesser of two evils.
McCain’s not my top choice, but I agree with the author - 82% ACU rating ??? And he’s a liberal ???
McCain was not my first choice either. Fred Thompson was. But this mad rush to destroy him on really specious grounds makes me wonder if there is an ulterior motive among some of the conservative media.. I don’t know. I have followed McCain’s career for a long time and while I have disagreed with him on some things, he is pretty reliably conservative over the course of his career. I have researched his record pretty thoroughly and have researched Romney’s and IMHO,MCCain is far more conservative and credible on it than Romney.
LOL. McCain was pushing this more than the WH. VDH is seriously offbase on this one. What party nominates the maverick to be its nominee? McCain has been siding with the Dems against his own party. His ACU rating in 2006 was 65.
His rating in 2006 was 65.
Hillary’s was 9. Obama’s was 8.
Don’t tell me you forgot the way McCain scrambled to help the leftists in their campaign to stop Bush from appointing real judges.
My point is that everything McCain has done is consistent with a leftist agenda. You’re the nitwit if you don’t understand that.
Indeed.
You give me hope for the party, my friend. Thank you.
Terrence Boyle, Janice Rogers Brown, to name only two. With these judges or others like them eventually on the Supreme Court, the leftist agenda would be severely damaged.
But McCain stood with the leftists, who used political means to block the appointment of these good judges by President Bush.
Actually, you are partly right; McCain isn’t really a liberal, although he mostly cozys up to them. He’s a viscious, egocentric globalist/socialist tyrant, and probably the most dangerous person to seek the office since LBJ.
His frank embrace of Roe v Wade also belies his attempt to appear as pro-life.
As for Rush, he has always backed the candidate that he saw as the best chance, which explains his descent from Hunter to Thompson, to Romney, but I suspect that it’ll be tough for him to drop all the way to McCain.
How will things be to have 20,000,000 more democrats?
Do we have this “Reconquista” graphic in a bigger form? I want to attend the local McCain rally here in Missouri tomorrow.
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