While the Clinton and Obama supporters try to get over their disdain for the other candidate and move on, we have a Republican foe by the name of John S. McCain who is still running around out there with people acting like he's some sort of maverick. At the beginning of this campaign, I respected Senator McCain because I thought he was a "straight talker" due to the fact that he did oppose his party at times. During the height of the Democratic Primary when tensions were highest, I even said I would vote for McCain over Clinton because at least I thought I could trust what he said (even if I didn't agree with any of it). But now that the Democratic primaries are officially over, and Obama is officially the "last man standing" as the Democratic nominee for President, I'm seeing more of McCain's true colors, and I realize he is a total fraud.
JuMp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
In his quest to become the Republican nominee, McCain has contradicted himself and leaned further right than most would have expected.
There's the fact that so far in 2008 McCain has voted with Bush 100% of the time (that is, when he bothered to show up):
CQ's Presidential Support studies try to determine how often a legislator votes in line with the President's position:
CQ tries to determine what the president personally, as distinct from other administration officials, does and does not want in the way of legislative action. This is done by analyzing his messages to Congress, news conference remarks and other public statements and documents.
So, these studies only track votes when the President has an explicit, stated opinion on a bill. According to CQ, Senator John McCain has voted with President Bush 100% of the time in 2008 and 95% of the time in 2007
The fact that he touts his "experience" but has missed more time at his job than any other Presidental candidate (that ever was in the race):
Republican presidential front-runner John McCain has skipped more than half the Senate's votes in the past year and he expects to miss more.
"It's very hard, obviously. I've missed a lot of votes, and there's no doubt about it," the Arizona senator told reporters Wednesday during a flight from Phoenix to Washington.
[snip]
McCain has missed 255 of 450 votes cast in the Senate since January including every vote this year. That's according to the Democratic National Committee, which keeps a tally.
Obama has missed about 40 percent, or 170 votes, and Clinton has missed 24 percent, or 108 votes, according to the DNC tally.
One of those missed votes was late Wednesday, when Senate Republicans blocked a bid by Democrats to add $44 billion to help the elderly, disabled veterans, the unemployed and businesses to an economic stimulus package.
There were votes that Obama and Clinton made their way back to Washinton to cast, that McCain didn't, the latest of which was the GI Bill. He has been the presumptive nominee for MONTHS now, you mean to tell me he couldn't take a little time out of laughing with his supporters calling Clinton a b*tch to show up to work? It's like like he didn't have transportation. The man didn't even bother to show up to vote on the stimulus package! Of course, this article is from Feb. so I'm sure all three candidates have missed more votes since then, but I'm sure McCain still hasn't made an appearance to vote in the Senate yet this year, and if he has there haven't been many times.
And how does he respond to missing important votes:
"First of all, I have not been there for a number of votes. The same thing happened in the campaign of 2000," he said. "The people of Arizona understand I'm running for president of the United States."
Mind you, this was said like 2-3 weeks ago, when he'd been the presumptive nominee for at least a couple of months. He wasn't running against anyone, so
why couldn't he take time out of his busy schedule to show up to vote on a bill about Climate change? Obama was the presumptive nominee for less than 24 hours before he showed up on the Senate floor to discipline LIEberman and do what is constituency voted for him to do. . . LEGISLATE.
He rarely goes against the GOP (when he bothers to show up to vote):
In some ways, three votes in 2003 illustrate the complex relationship McCain has with his party and the limited effect his resistance has had.
During a six-week span in the spring, McCain repeatedly voted with Democrats seeking to limit Bush's budget and tax-cut package that year. Even so, Cheney ensured the GOP prevailed on 51-50 votes each time.
The overall tax-cut legislation that year passed by two votes and over McCain's resistance.
These days, McCain travels the campaign trail vowing to make permanent those same temporary Bush tax cuts.
In 10 other cases in which the vice president broke a tie, McCain voted with the GOP every time.
In all the close votes, McCain clearly helped Democrats on just four occasions over the past decade.
In May 2006, for example, McCain and 10 other Republicans voted to put off an amendment offered by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. Democrats managed to fend off the amendment, which would have barred those who originally entered the U.S. illegally from receiving Social Security benefits for the work they did before becoming legal workers.
The amendment failed by a 50-49 vote with McCain's help. But, in the end, neither party managed to achieve significant changes to the nation's immigration laws.
Then you have his terrible temper:
"The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine," said Mississippi's Thad Cochran, who has known McCain for more than three decades. "He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper, and he worries me."
His flip flopping on the economy:
McCain, who would like us to see him as holding a consistent and principled stance on tax cuts and fiscal discipline, is engaging in the mother of all economic policy flip-flops.
If McCain's opposition to Bush's tax cuts was based on the unseemliness of letting deficits balloon for the benefit of top earners in a time of war, then his opposition should have grown stronger. Instead, it grew weaker and then collapsed. Since McCain's votes, we have witnessed budget surpluses turn into projected $400 billion annual deficits.
[snip]
Rather, these huge additions to our $5.3 trillion national debt are on top of the cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000 -- a policy that McCain and Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all support.
``Straight talk'' from McCain would acknowledge these proposals would swell the national debt or cause painful spending cuts to pay for them. The McCain camp instead offers vague and unrealistic promises to cut unspecified spending and eliminate earmarks. McCain makes a lot of this last point, even though banning earmarks would only pay for less than a half of 1 percent of his high-income tax-cut proposals.
Where have you gone, fiscally responsible John McCain?
He's not on the "straight talk" express, he's on the "flip flop" express, as noted in this famous YouTube video:
This man is a complete fraud, and the fact that the media is too in love with him to call him on it really bugs me. It's almost like the media cover up leading up to the War. They want to sell a good story, not the truth. The truth is McCain is NOT a straight talker, and we need to get that out there.
There is so much more out there that I didn't even TOUCH on yet in this diary.