For how long,

[billay]

George Will: McCain is a mainstream Democrat

By GEORGE F. WILL

 

Sunday, Jan. 20, 2008

 

IN 2004, ONE of John McCain's closest associates, John Weaver, spoke to John Kerry about the possibility of McCain running as Kerry's vice presidential running mate. In "No Excuses," Bob Shrum's memoir of his role in numerous presidential campaigns, including Kerry's, Shrum writes that Weaver assured Kerry that "McCain was serious about the possibility of teaming up with him," and Kerry approached McCain. He, however, was more serious about seeking the 2008 Republican nomination.

 

But was it unreasonable for Kerry to think McCain might be comfortable on a Democratic ticket? Not really.

 

In ABC's New Hampshire debate, McCain said: "Why shouldn't we be able to reimport drugs from Canada?" A conservative's answer is:

 

That amounts to importing Canada's price controls, a large step toward a system in which some medicines would be inexpensive but many others --new pain-relieving, life-extending pharmaceuticals -- would be unavailable.

 

Setting drug prices by government fiat rather than market forces results in huge reductions of funding for research and development of new drugs.

 

McCain's evident aim is to reduce pharmaceutical companies' profits. But if all those profits were subtracted from the nation's health-care bill, the pharmaceutical component of that bill would be reduced only from 10 percent to 8 percent -- and innovation would stop, taking a terrible toll in unnecessary suffering and premature death. When McCain explains that trade-off to voters, he will actually have engaged in straight talk.

 

There are decent, intelligent people who believe that equity or efficiency or both are often served by government setting prices. In America, such people are called Democrats.

 

Because McCain is a "maverick" -- the media encomium reserved for Republicans who reject important Republican principles -- he would be a conciliatory President. He has indeed worked with Ted Kennedy on immigration reform, with Russ Feingold on restricting political speech (McCain-Feingold) and with Kennedy and John Edwards -- a trial lawyer drawn to an enlargement of opportunities for litigation -- on the "patients' bill of rights." McCain is, however, an unlikely conciliator because he is quick to denigrate the motives, and hence the characters, of those who oppose him.

 

He promiscuously accuses others of "corruption," the ubiquity of which he says justifies McCain-Feingold's expansive government regulation of the quantity, timing and content of campaign speech.

 

McCain says he would nominate Supreme Court justices similar to Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Sam Alito. But how likely is he to nominate jurists who resemble those four: They consider his signature achievement constitutionally dubious.

 

When the Supreme Court upheld McCain-Feingold, 5-4, Scalia and Thomas were in the minority. That was before Alito replaced Sandra Day O'Connor, who was in the majority. Two years later, McCain filed his own brief supporting federal suppression of a right-to-life group's issue advertisement in Wisconsin because it mentioned a candidate for federal office during the McCain-Feingold blackout period prior to an election. The court ruled 5-4 against McCain's position, with Alito in the majority.

 

In the New Hampshire debate, McCain asserted that corruption is the reason drugs currently cannot be reimported from Canada. The reason is "the power of the pharmaceutical companies." When Mitt Romney interjected, "Don't turn the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys," McCain replied, "Well, they are." There is a place in American politics for moralizers who think in such Manichaean simplicities. That place is in the Democratic Party, where people who talk like McCain are considered not mavericks but mainstream.

 

Republicans are supposed to eschew demagogic aspersions concerning complicated economic matters. But applause greets faux "straight talk" that brands as "bad" the industry responsible for the facts that polio is no longer a scourge, that childhood leukemia is no longer a death sentence, that depression and other mental illnesses are treatable diseases, that the rate of heart attacks and heart failures has been cut more than in half in 50 years.

 

When McCain and Joe Lieberman introduced legislation empowering Congress to comprehensively regulate U.S. industries' emissions of greenhouse gases in order to "prevent catastrophic global warming," they co-authored an op-ed column that radiated McCainian intolerance of disagreement. It said that a U.N. panel's report "puts the final nail in denial's coffin about the problem of global warming." Concerning the question of whether human activity is causing catastrophic warming, they said, "the debate has ended." Interesting, is it not, that no one considers it necessary to insist that "the debate has ended" about whether the Earth is round. People only insist that a debate stop when they are afraid of what might be learned if it continues.

 

George Will is a commentator for ABC News and a columnist for Newsweek in Washington, D.C.

[Ursa Majoris]

Read this in the Trib a couple days ago. George Will is just a propagandist.

[billay]

Read this in the Trib a couple days ago. George Will is just a propagandist.

To what end? Just to stop McCain's apparent momentum?

 

I only read him from time to time, but I was suprised at his disdain for John McCain.

[Ill Nuts]

didn't know anyone still listened to this little pseudo-intellectual nerd. I USE BIG WORDS!!

[CaP'N GRuNGe]

He's no Tucker Carlson.

 

:bowtie:

[Bill Swerski]

To what end? Just to stop McCain's apparent momentum?

 

I only read him from time to time, but I was suprised at his disdain for John McCain.

 

McCain isn't well-liked by hardcore conservatives. He's been bashed relentlessly by Rick Santorum, Laura Ingraham, and many others. So this isn't too surprising.

 

That said, it may work to his advantage in the General Election, if he gets there.

[billay]

He's no Tucker Carlson.

 

:bowtie:

I take solace in the fact that John Stewart pretty much squashed his career.

[Bill Swerski]

I take solace in the fact that John Stewart pretty much squashed his career.

 

[Azazello1313]

To what end? Just to stop McCain's apparent momentum?

 

I only read him from time to time, but I was suprised at his disdain for John McCain.

 

there are a lot of "conservatives" who really dislike mccain, for pretty much the reasons will spells out. how long has this been the case? well, since before the 2000 primaries -- so, quite a while.

 

there are a lot of mccain's positions in the past that i, personally, have disagreed with. but is it really so bad to have someone who voted against bush's tax cuts because there weren't offsetting spending cuts? is it really so bad to have someone who has a long record of trying to blow up his own party's pork spending as well as the other party's? maybe it is a good time for a republican whose first fiscal impulse is to cut spending rather than to cut taxes, and someone who has a 20 year record of actually being bipartisan and going across the aisle to get things done, as opposed to just talking about it and then playing the game like everyone else once in office. i just think the guy is uniquely qualified to be president of this country at this time in history.

[DemonKnight]

McCain isn't well-liked by hardcore conservatives. He's been bashed relentlessly by Rick Santorum, Laura Ingraham, and many others.

 

I'd say thats a good thing. Rick Santorum is the Anti-Christ.

[DemonKnight]

there are a lot of mccain's positions in the past that i, personally, have disagreed with. but is it really so bad to have someone who voted against bush's tax cuts because there weren't offsetting spending cuts? is it really so bad to have someone who has a long record of trying to blow up his own party's pork spending as well as the other party's? maybe it is a good time for a republican whose first fiscal impulse is to cut spending rather than to cut taxes, and someone who has a 20 year record of actually being bipartisan and going across the aisle to get things done, as opposed to just talking about it and then playing the game like everyone else once in office. i just think the guy is uniquely qualified to be president of this country at this time in history.

 

Bravo.

 

I really like McCain. I think it would be a great thing for our country right now to have a split ticket for Pres/VP.

[Bill Swerski]

there are a lot of "conservatives" who really dislike mccain, for pretty much the reasons will spells out. how long has this been the case? well, since before the 2000 primaries -- so, quite a while.

 

there are a lot of mccain's positions in the past that i, personally, have disagreed with. but is it really so bad to have someone who voted against bush's tax cuts because there weren't offsetting spending cuts? is it really so bad to have someone who has a long record of trying to blow up his own party's pork spending as well as the other party's? maybe it is a good time for a republican whose first fiscal impulse is to cut spending rather than to cut taxes, and someone who has a 20 year record of actually being bipartisan and going across the aisle to get things done, as opposed to just talking about it and then playing the game like everyone else once in office. i just think the guy is uniquely qualified to be president of this country at this time in history.

 

I more or less agree. The fact that he wants to end the increased spending of the current administration is a big plus in my book. Being a war hero and a decent guy doesn't hurt either. It'll be interesting to see how Thompson dropping out affects him.

 

Did anybody else see McCain's mother out there for his victory speech on Saturday night? She's freaking 97 and is running around out there campaigning for him! That family has some hardcore genes.

[Azazello1313]

Did anybody else see McCain's mother out there for his victory speech on Saturday night? She's freaking 97 and is running around out there campaigning for him! That family has some hardcore genes.

 

yeah, that woman did NOT look 97 years old. i almost couldn't believe that was his mom, SHE's the one who looks 71. he'd be wise to have her at a lot of his campaign stops, because just having her there is a pretty effective way of thwarting the "he's too old to be president" attack.

[CaP'N GRuNGe]

yeah, that woman did NOT look 97 years old. i almost couldn't believe that was his mom, SHE's the one who looks 71. he'd be wise to have her at a lot of his campaign stops, because just having her there is a pretty effective way of thwarting the "he's too old to be president" attack.

 

She can play the Bill Clinton role for John. Afterall, his chief rival is a mormon.

[Azazello1313]

She can play the Bill Clinton role for John. Afterall, his chief rival is a mormon.

 

i didn't see that, mccain's reaction was pretty funny. i guess i would clarify my comment to say that the mccain camp would be wise to have her seen, but not heard. that would be great if he were running against obama..."well, as far as obama, he's a black fella, see"

[Ursa Majoris]

I guess my beef against McCain partially centers around his ridiculous walkabout in Baghdad. That and his failure to hit back against the Bush campaign's vituperative destruction of him last time around.

 

I don't disagree with his focus on bringing spending under control though.

[billay]

So who do the "hardcore" conservatives support this year?

[Bill Swerski]

he'd be wise to have her at a lot of his campaign stops, because just having her there is a pretty effective way of thwarting the "he's too old to be president" attack.

 

+1

[CaP'N GRuNGe]

I guess my beef against McCain partially centers around his ridiculous walkabout in Baghdad. That and his failure to hit back against the Bush campaign's vituperative destruction of him last time around.

 

I don't disagree with his focus on bringing spending under control though.

 

Ack, I forgot about that stroll through the heavily guarded Iraqi marketplace claiming it was safer than downtown America.

 

As far as his focus on getting spending under control, where has he been for the last 25 years? I guess as he's recently admitted, he just doesn't understand economics. But he did say he bought Greenspan's book.

[CaP'N GRuNGe]

So who do the "hardcore" conservatives support this year?

 

Duncan Hunter

[Azazello1313]

As far as his focus on getting spending under control, where has he been for the last 25 years?

 

he's been the most vocal opponent of congressional pork for as long as i can remember. even the club for growth, which doesn't really like mccain on balance because he isn't pro-tax-cut enough, gives him high marks on cutting spending:

Despite his poor record on tax cuts, Senator McCain's zealous effort against wasteful spending deserves praise. Over his twenty years in the Senate, he has been at the forefront of the battle to eliminate wasteful projects and inject greater discipline and transparency into the appropriations process, often by introducing a slew of cost-cutting amendments. While many of these measures did not pass, they served an important role in shining a glaring light on congressional profligacy. These amendments include:

 

A 2006 amendment to cut $74.5 million for various agriculture programs[17]

A 2006 amendment to cut $6 million for sugarcane growers in Hawaii[18]

A 2003 amendment to reduce funding for the Yazoo Basin Backwater Pump Project in Mississippi[19]

A 2002 amendment to eliminate $2.5 million for coral reef mapping of the waters off the coast of Hawaii[20]

A 1998 amendment to cut $78 million in projects from an emergency supplemental appropriations bill[21]

A 1994 motion to kill an amendment to provide $40 million for the conversion of a New York City post office into an Amtrak train station[22]

Senator McCain has also voted against a number of pricey bills, even when most of his colleagues preferred to toe the party line. These include:

 

A vote against the 2003 Medicare prescription drug plan[23]

A vote against the Farm Security Bill in 2002[24]

A vote against the 2005 Highway Bill, one of only four senators to object to the pork-stuffed bill[25]

A vote against providing Amtrak with an extra $550 million for the fiscal year 2007[26]

A vote against $2 billion in milk subsidies[27]

One of fifteen senators to vote for Senator Tom Coburn's (R-OK) amendment transferring $223 million for the "Bridge to Nowhere" to the repair of a Louisiana bridge damaged by Hurricane Katrina.[28] Senator McCain was also one of only thirteen senators to vote for an amendment by Senator Coburn to eliminate $950,000 for a parking lot for the Joslyn Art Museum in Nebraska[29]

A vote for welfare reform[30]

[Yukon Cornelius]

I guess my beef against McCain his failure to hit back against the Bush campaign's vituperative destruction of him last time around.

 

I don't disagree with his focus on bringing spending under control though.

yup

[Azazello1313]

So who do the "hardcore" conservatives support this year?

 

they're all over: the real bible thumpers are behind huckabee; the mormons and a fair number of the pro-business types are behind romney; a lot of the military and ex-military type conservatives are behind mccain; thompson was appealing to a lot of the folks who were a mixture of all of the above, but now he's out.

[CaP'N GRuNGe]

they're all over: the real bible thumpers are behind huckabee; the mormons and a fair number of the pro-business types are behind romney; a lot of the military and ex-military type conservatives are behind mccain; thompson was appealing to a lot of the folks who were a mixture of all of the above, but now he's out.

 

Judging from the polls, Thompson was appealing to Savage and a handful of other voters.

[The Misfit]

they're all over: the real bible thumpers are behind huckabee; the mormons and a fair number of the pro-business types are behind romney; a lot of the military and ex-military type conservatives are behind mccain; thompson was appealing to a lot of the folks who were a mixture of all of the above, but now he's out.

 

I'd read somewhere that Rush said if Huckabee or McCain were the nominee he'll quit the Republican party, or the party will self-destruct, or something like that.

 

Best endorsement of McCain I've heard yet.