Two Faced McCain Strikes Again on Earmarks

by Matt Stoller, Tue Feb 14, 2006 at 03:19:41 PM EST

A new earmark-reform proposal authored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is quickly gathering support from unelected critics of pork-barrel spending, but even some of those supporters acknowledge that the measure ignores the lion's share of the federal budget and faces powerful obstacles to enactment.

Shorter John McCain: I'll propose stuff that has no chance of passing and even less of a chance of working.

Let me just point out what's so pernicious about this - here's a guy who just doesn't care if his legislation works. He really doesn't. He's proposing it because it looks like the right thing, not because it is the right thing. That's principle, I guess, but it's the principle of someone who is proud, impatient, stubborn, delusional, and dishonest with himself and others.

Remind you of anyone in charge of a major industrialized nation? No? Me neither.

Tags: John McCain (all tags)

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Re: Two Faced McCain Strikes Again on Earmarks

When it comes to McCain, it's all about positioning for the presidential run. Everything. Everything. Every last word and breath he takes.

We should fear people who crave power this much. He has to be stopped.

by LiberalFromPA 2006-02-14 04:49PM | 0 recs

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Re: Two Faced McCain Strikes Again on Earmarks

I remember going to an event sponsored by AIPAC in 2001 back when McCain was still posing as a moderate, a bit right of the DLC and definately left of mainstream GOPers in congress.

Prior to the talk, I thought pretty highly of him after his 2000 presidential run. After the speech, I came of jaded as can be.

The man was a phony. He was playing up to the "youths" (this was an event offered just for staffers/interns) and trying to seem moderate, cool and hip. I realized he had a strategy then to be a third party candidate for president in 2004. He was going to try to be Bullworth.

Soon, he realized that it would be hell to get his third party even on the ballot in most states (just ask Nader) let alone get money and win.

So, he linked arms with Bush and periodically made noises of moderation when it would help him without actually harming what Bush wanted to do (see torture). This way, he could pretend to still be 2000 McCain while really being Reaganite/Bushite 2008 McCain.

The same people that fell for him besides journalists are the type of people who are now in the blogosphere (after all, McCain raised big bucks online in 2000, he was the first to do so). I don't think bloggers will be fooled again.

by DaveB 2006-02-14 05:44PM | 0 recs

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Fooled

Bloggers won't be fooled again. The worry is that everyone else will be.

by LiberalFromPA 2006-02-14 06:42PM | 0 recs

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Re: Fooled

This is why senate Democrats need to stop co-sponsoring legislation with him that doesn't really do anything moderate. They give McCain the moderate cover he needs.

Senate Democrats need to be loud and clear about his conservatism, and if McCain looks to be the front runner for the nomination in 2008, we need to define him early as a major conservative.

by DaveB 2006-02-15 06:59AM | 0 recs

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Re: Two Faced McCain Strikes

The netroots should make this a project: make the media scrutinize McCain's record and stop drooling all over him. This guy is a winger, and he ought to be exposed before it's too late.

by bluenc 2006-02-14 07:18PM | 0 recs

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Re: Two Faced McCain Strikes Again on Earmarks

by bluenc 2006-02-14 07:18PM | 0 recs

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Re: Two Faced McCain Strikes Again on Earmarks

Hatchets are best left in the hands of little old ladies who know how to use them.

If purported liberals insist on the illogic of attacking McCain for attempting reform, they will prove only that "Democratic liberal" is an oxymoron as it seems to me to be.

The only proposed presidential candidate that this liberal independent would enthusiastically vote for over McCain is McCain's partner in reform, Russ Feingold.

Neither McCain nor Feingold have the slightest chance of being nominated or elected president outside of a longshot third-party candidacy.

Republicans Light are no improvement over Republicans Heavy and may even be worse to this aging Gene McCarthy fan who retains a Democratic registration in New York so he has a chance to vote against a rightwinger like Hillary Clinton twice.

by terryhallinan 2006-02-14 11:18PM | 0 recs

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Re: Two Faced McCain Strikes Again on Earmarks

Standard orthodoxy from McCainiacs. Lets ignore his actual abysmal conservative voting record-one of the five most conservative senators in this Congress-and instead attack Hillary, whose rating places her right in the middle of the Democratic caucus, as a right winger.

BTW, I don't want Hillary to run either, but she's neither particularly liberal or conservative.

McCain grandstands and makes proposals that he know either won't pass or won't work. They always manage to make him look good, though.

When Bush signed the anti-torture bill but stated that it didn't apply to him, McCain made nary a peep. He knew he was going to get political credit for the worthless gesture and moved on. What a leader!

Liberals don't attack McCain for attempting reform, we attack him for grandstanding on reform to mask his real record; one at least as conservative and unacceptable as the current president's.

by howie14 2006-02-15 03:48AM | 0 recs

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Re: Two Faced McCain Strikes Again on Earmarks

Hillary is a conservative.

McCain is a liberal.

Is it so hard to check a dictionary?

"CONSERVATIVE, n.
A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others." - The Devil's Dictionary

by terryhallinan 2006-02-15 02:04PM | 0 recs

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Re: Two Faced McCain Strikes Again on Earmarks

I don't think that even remotely works. I truly think you need to actually look at real voting records instead of the McCain picture on your bedroom ceiling.

BTW, I don't buy the "Gene Mc Carthy independent" stuff, either.

by howie14 2006-02-17 09:22AM | 0 recs

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Re: Two Faced McCain Strikes Again on Earmarks

Am I the only one who remembers that during Bush Jr's. 2000 campaign, he ran as a big-time "moderate???" Yeah he did. The entire corporate media machine was droning on and on and on about how he consistently appointed Democrats to high posts as the Texas governor. How he "worked so very well in tandem with people of other perspectives."

They sure know how to fool them rubes, eh?

McCain's daddy just happens to be a damn admiral in the Navy. Johnny Boy went to one the fanciest exclusive boarding schools in the country. Let us just say, he did not grow up in Harlem!!!

by blues 2006-02-14 11:18PM | 0 recs

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Re: Two Faced McCain Strikes Again on Earmarks

I looked up McCain's ultra-rich boarding scoll on the 'net maybe 2 years ago. It was hell to find it even then. It was on my dead hard drive. I know that renegade educator John Taylor Gatto knows all about it, though.

by blues 2006-02-14 11:26PM | 0 recs

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Re: Two Faced McCain Strikes Again on Earmarks

I don't agree with you once again.

Nevertheless, why don't the Dems get behind a serious earmark bill. Everyone agrees earmarking (making policy decisions in money committees) is the problem. Why is everyone so scared of this?

by aiko 2006-02-15 03:35AM | 0 recs

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Re: Two Faced McCain Strikes Again on Earmarks

McCain also left his wife who supported him through hotel Hanoi for a much young, wealthier woman (who is now Cindy McCain) and he used her $ and AZ connections to run for congress there.

He is no Arizonian and no paragon of morality either.

by DaveB 2006-02-15 07:02AM | 0 recs