McCain Won, Your Guy Lost – Now Do What’s Best for America
Jules, one more response to some of your points:
“John McCain can’t win on his own. He needs the social and economic conservatives. He needs to convince them while still winning over the moderate independents and Democrats. It isn’t an easy balancing act, but it is the reality America is faced with today.
No, he doesn’t need to “convince” me, he needs to change. He needs to change his view that profitable companies that keep their profits, return them to investors and reinvest them in their growth is a GOOD thing. He needs to assure me he will block every effort by every department in the government to spend more money. He needs to assure me he will make it impossible for illegals to remain in this country (block their ability to send money home, remove educational benefits to their children, penalize companies who hire them, do not grant citizenship to their children, only provide medical treatment in life-threatening instances). It is NOT a “balancing act”, his current mind set damages our country and he needs to change.
“That is an opening for conservative power brokers to influence the shape of this campaign and the administration that follows, to make sure their views are represented. It is an opening for them to demonstrate that they are relevant.”
I never thought there was any doubt my ideas, and those of most conservatives, were “relevant”. Has the Republican Party really slid so far left?? I fear it has.
“That argument is undercut by the claim that McCain can’t be trusted not to betray whatever interests he caters to in the campaign. And, depending on what kind of running mate, what kind of people he draws around him, that may or may not be true. That is a risk.”
I am unwilling to accept the risk. He needs to have an honest change of heart. If he does not, he will not become President, period. Again I ask the Republican Party, how the hell could such a man, who represents so little of what we once were as a party, become our candidate?
“The security argument against John McCain is a limited one, more a matter of pique than anything else. He vocally opposed harsh interrogation techniques, which irked many on the right as a semantic bickering that undercut the president and fueled the opposition in time of war. It is otherwise largely irrelevant, however. The most objectionable interrogation methods are controversial among practitioners, and are not regularly practiced.”
I suspect the dirty little secret about his resistance to torture is that it works. Korea proved that and it created a new military code regarding capture and a serviceman’s response under torture. Everyone breaks – EVERYONE. That is neither good nor bad thing, it is just truth. While Senator McCain endured the most inhumane types of torture, that is not what we inflict on our high-value prisoners. To place our interrogators in McCain’s desired limbo is unfair to them and dangerous to our country and our security.
In my mind, Senator McCain will be unwilling to genuinely move back to the basics. He sees his future power base as living left-of-center, which, in fact, it does. He has no interest in me. He has no interest in changing what has worked for him for 25 years. Resistance, stubbornness, and unwillingness to move has been his trademark for his whole Senate career, he will not change his views in 8 months.
