Bush, with more nuts

Many people tend to think of Sen. John McCain as a maverick. Many people think of him as a foreign policy expert. Many people think he sticks to his guns and his principles.\nThey are all wrong.\nIf you remember McCain from the 2000 campaign, you probably remember him as a gutsy centrist who challenged party orthodoxy. But over the last eight years, he has drifted continuously towards the right, selling out any principles he may have had for success in the Republican Party. Let’s see just how far John McCain has fallen on a few issues.\nTAX CUTS: In 2000, McCain stood against Bush’s disastrous tax cuts, which he called too beneficial to the rich without helping the poor. He voted against them twice, believing them an affront to his “conscience.” Too bad McCain 2008 actually wants to extend and expand the Bush tax cuts, which have ballooned our debt and screwed our social services. So much for his conscience. \nIMMIGRATION: In 2007, McCain spoke firmly for the need to combat illegal immigration with a Bush-backed comprehensive plan to reform both border security and a path to citizenship. By early 2008, he had already decided we needed a better border fence first, in order to appease the far-right base.\nTORTURE: McCain has often scored political points for his opposition to torture. After all, he was actually tortured in Vietnam. Yet, he voted against banning waterboarding despite having spoken against it. McCain thinks torture is bad, but he caved in letting the Bush administration decide what “torture” is. Because trusting the Bush administration with human rights always works out.\nIRAQ: Here, perhaps, McCain’s position mostly disagrees with his reputation as a fighter against the Beltway Establishment. Unlike most of this nation, McCain believes the best way forward in Iraq is an indefinite timetable, an endless war budget and a perpetual commitment to an ever-increasing body count. McCain has said publicly he’s OK with staying in Iraq for 100 years. Are you? Yet, for inexplicable reasons, the press still regards McCain as a foreign policy expert, with tons of “experience.” \nBottom line — as we’ve learned over the last eight years, experience does not equal expertise. McCain’s stubborn attachment of his political career to the disgusting, illegal and immoral war in Iraq is a sign of how far he has fallen since the heady days of 2000. Make no mistake: McCain dogmatically believes in this unjust, mutually destructive war and will continue to fight for it if elected president.\nHe has emptied out every moral high ground he may have had over ordinary Republicans. He kissed and made up with radical right-wing cleric Jerry “Agent of Intolerance” Falwell to suck up to the right wing of his party. McCain, the “foreign policy expert,” thought that the war in Iraq would be “easy.” Now, he acknowledges that he knew it would be “long and hard.” \nMcCain’s tragic fall from honorable to deceitful has been sad to see. But his free ride needs to end right now, before this country gets a third Bush administration under the name McCain.