John McCain has lost his identity. Once the perennial whipping boy of the hardliners in his party, McCain is campaigning as the champion of endless war in Iraq and on the working class at home.
To bring us back to a time when less superficial unity reigned among Republicans, recall the vicious and somewhat pompous attack leveled in 2006 by Grover Norquist, Republican Party ideologue-turned "conduit" of cash for Jack Abramoff, for McCain's supposed opposition to Bush tax policies. Norquist, head of the pro-national debt Americans for Tax Relief, an organization cited in the Abramoff scandal as having laundered illegal bribes from Abramoff to various Republicans, said, "John McCain thinks he can't be president if I'm standing here saying he's got a problem with taxes." Despite his problems with the law, Norquist remains a close ally to a number of key Republicans, including Vice President Cheney.
Deposed Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum lashed out at McCain basically accusing him of outright fraud. Said Santorum, “It’s amazing to hear what John McCain is trying to convince the voters he is all about. The bottom line is, I served 12 years with him, six years in the Senate as one of the leaders of the Senate, trying to put together the conservative agenda, and almost at every turn, on domestic policy, John McCain was not only against us, but leading the charge on the other side.” Santorum described a McCain presidency as "dangerous."
Right-wing TV personality and former Dick Cheney lackey Mary Matlin, who admitted in an interview Feb. 20 with CNN's Wolf Blitzer that she only votes for the most right-wing candidates, until very recently threw her own punches at McCain. He won't cut taxes enough for the rich, he isn't xenophobic enough, and he belongs to the global warming "cult," she spouted.
But now all three are lining up with McCain. What happened to turn McCain overnight from an immigrant-loving, tree-hugging cult zombie anti-conservative liberal into the bastion of Reaganism Bushism they could swallow?
Pandering, but also memory loss. McCain's appears to be admitting now that he just doesn't know much about many issues. On the economy, McCain told the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board that he "doesn't really understand economics." In other words, as Americans are loudly and uniformly saying the economy is among their top concerns and is a major source of their discontent with Bush administration policies, McCain is saying get used to it. He appears to be working hard to reassure Republican Party donors, ideologues, and pundits that he won't change a thing, and maybe the policies he supported in the past were just the result of his stupidity.
To prove it, McCain avoided critical votes on the economic stimulus package in the Senate earlier this month. For instance, when an economic stimulus package came before the Senate that would have expanded the economic stimulus to cover seniors and disabled veterans as well as provide modest infrastructure investments, the Republicans filibustered it by one vote. And though he was in Washington in plenty of time to make the vote, McCain refused to show up, a vote which could have potentially broken the filibuster. McCain single-handedly could have brought the package to the floor for an up-or-down vote and speeded up much-needed economic assistance to millions of working families. When tested on what his values are, McCain just didn't pass muster.
When ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Feb. 17 asked him more about his economic policies, McCain talked about earmarks. He could offer no substantial plans to end the flow of jobs out of the economy, halt home foreclosures which are expected to be at record levels during the first year of the next presidency, or ease sky-rocketing health care costs. On the issues, McCain is poised to continue Bush's failed policies for four more years.
Unfortunately, keeping a Bush clone in office for four more years would cost working families enormously. A Senate Budget Committee estimate shows "that funding Republican priorities like making the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent and funding ongoing – and perhaps permanent – operations in Iraq will add $6.3 trillion to the [Congressional Budget Office's] already dismal ten-year predictions."
On the Iraq war, McCain has been more consistent. Way back in November 2001, McCain joined former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and retired CIA Chief James Woolsey on ABC's Nightline to make a misleading case for attacking Iraq in retaliation for 9/11. Rumsfeld rambled on about the imaginary links "between the terrorists in the Philippines and the al-Qaeda and people in Iraq." Iraq had "been involved in terrorist acts against the United States," added Woolsey. And McCain the straight-talker? McCain boldly and falsely tied Iraq directly to 9/11 by insisting there had "been significant involvement on the part of the Iraqis and Saddam Hussein in the acts of terror that have been committed in the past."
An investigative book by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, titled The Price of Loyalty, revealed that Donald Rumsfeld and the leading elements in the Bush administration had from "day one" sought war with Iraq. Based on his conversations with former Bush administration Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and 19,000 internal documents acquired through O'Neill, Suskind wrote, "Day one, these things were laid and sealed.” The September 11th attacks provided the opportunity to make an Iraq war possible. And McCain was there holding hats.
About a year later, when Dick Cheney looked America in the eye and said Americans would be greeted as liberators in Iraq, McCain bobbed his head in agreement and repeated the talking points. Even as the war grew increasingly unpopular, casualties mounted with no apparent accomplishable political objective in sight, and revelations about the lack of adequate equipment for troops and atrocities at Abu Ghraib prompted the call for Donald Rumsfeld to resign, McCain refused to join other members of Congress in calling for Rumsfeld to be fired in December 2004 and again in April 2006.
Along the way as the quagmire deepened, McCain marched arm-in-arm with Bush. In 2003, McCain mouthed Bush's rosy predictions, saying that the end of the war was "very much in sight." Two years later, McCain was back at it, arguing that another year would prove "stay the course" was working. In 2006, as Iraq edged closer to full-on civil war, McCain said everything was "on the right track."
More recently, McCain indicated that there may, in fact, be no end in sight at all. Just weeks ago, he promised a Republican audience that he would keep US troops in Iraq for 100 years, maybe more. McCain also rejected the US Senate's Constitutional responsibility for approving treaties when he denounced bipartisan efforts in the Senate to limit Bush's effort to impose a "status of forces agreement" on the American people unilaterally and without Senate approval, an agreement that could keep US troops in Iraq permanently.
McCain told ABC's George Stephanopoulos Feb. 17 that he can make Bush's mistakes in Iraq better than he did. "I believe I can convince the American people," he growled, "that after nearly four years of mishandling the war, that we're now doing the right thing and are succeeding."
Indeed, McCain won the endorsement of his once bitter rival, George W. Bush, only after it became clear McCain would serve as a surrogate for Bush in the crowning jewel of Bush's failed presidency, the Iraq war. McCain's campaign even repeated verbatim a line from Bush's last, sadly laughable State of the Union Address: the "terrorists are on the run," even as the Taliban is regaining more control of Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden, the real mastermind behind 9/11, remains at large.
From the economy to the Iraq war, the wheels have come off the "straight-talk express" and McCain is campaigning to drive the Bush train wreck.
