With major defections in his campaign staff, John McCain's promising '08 presidential bid looks like toast. Some who saw him as a moderate may be sad. I'm not.
John McCain, lofted by Democratic centrists as a negotiatable Republican moderate, suffered two major losses at the top echelons of his campaign staff. All this took place while McCain was, not ironically, addressing the Senate in support of Bush's war in Iraq.
While McCain's domestic pragmatism led him to such refreshing floor-crossing as the (now troubled) McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act, or his public opposition to the President's tacit endorsement of wartime torture, former POW McCain was nonetheless one of the most strident war hawks in the Senate as far back as the mid-90s. During the US enforcement of the post-Desert Storm "no-fly zones", McCain grilled a USAF general as to why fighter patrols weren't diverting out of the zone to attack AKAK installations, pushing for an argument to escalate back into an Iraq war.
In addition to being the most visible, consistent and near-psychotic war hawk -- no matter the war -- in the Senate, he is also the strongest War On Drugs hawk, an unrelenting abortion foe, pro-death penalty, pro-nuke, pro-NCLB, anti-gay marriage, pro-internet filtering, anti-net neutrality, pro-presidential prerogative, and pro-intelligent design. In addition, he waffled on tax cuts, ANWR, the use of anti-Asian racial slurs, and Jerry Falwell.
Of course, despite all this, McCain has gotten plenty of mileage out of his more moderate McCain-Feingold, gun control, torture, and immigration positions, converting them into a centrist image that could appeal to moderate Republicans and Democrats alike. Meanwhile, his egregious non-centrist, squarely-rightist positions on near everything else gets much less attention.
Campaign finance reform, gun control, and immigration do not a progressive ally make, particularly in a time when nearly everyone agrees that the Iraq War is the biggest problem facing the country and the most important political issue as of last year's mid-term election season, as well as LGBT issues being our era's civil rights crisis.
If you were about to consider McCain's fall today a sad day for the dream of American bipartisanship, don't. John McCain is not, and never was, your friend.