Mark Levin provides an excellent summary of why McCain is so disliked by Conservatives
This excellent article speaks for itself.
It is important for us to remember McCain’s track record of sticking it to Conservatives.
The Real McCain Record
Obstacles in the way of conservative support.By Mark R. Levin
There’s a reason some of John McCain’s conservative supporters avoid discussing his record. They want to talk about his personal story, his position on the surge, his supposed electability. But whenever the rest of his career comes up, the knee-jerk reply is to characterize the inquiries as attacks.
The McCain domestic record is a disaster. To say he fought spending, most particularly earmarks, is to nibble around the edges and miss the heart of the matter. For starters, consider:
McCain-Feingold — the most brazen frontal assault on political speech since Buckley v. Valeo.
McCain-Kennedy — the most far-reaching amnesty program in American history.
McCain-Lieberman — the most onerous and intrusive attack on American industry — through reporting, regulating, and taxing authority of greenhouse gases — in American history.
McCain-Kennedy-Edwards — the biggest boon to the trial bar since the tobacco settlement, under the rubric of a patients’ bill of rights.
McCain-Reimportation of Drugs — a significant blow to pharmaceutical research and development, not to mention consumer safety (hey Rudy, pay attention, see link).
And McCain’s stated opposition to the Bush 2001 and 2003 tax cuts was largely based on socialist, class-warfare rhetoric — tax cuts for the rich, not for the middle class. The public record is full of these statements. Today, he recalls only his insistence on accompanying spending cuts.
As chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, McCain was consistently hostile to American enterprise, from media and pharmaceutical companies to technology and energy companies.
McCain also led the Gang of 14, which prevented the Republican leadership in the Senate from mounting a rule change that would have ended the systematic use (actual and threatened) of the filibuster to prevent majority approval of judicial nominees.
And then there’s the McCain defense record.
His supporters point to essentially one policy strength, McCain’s early support for a surge and counterinsurgency. It has now evolved into McCain taking credit for forcing the president to adopt General David Petreaus’s strategy. Where’s the evidence to support such a claim?
Moreover, Iraq is an important battle in our war against the Islamo-fascist threat. But the war is a global war, and it most certainly includes the continental United States, which, after all, was struck on 9/11. How does McCain fare in that regard?
McCain-ACLU — the unprecedented granting of due-process rights to unlawful enemy combatants (terrorists).
McCain has repeatedly called for the immediate closing of Guantanamo Bay and the introduction of al-Qaeda terrorists into our own prisons — despite the legal rights they would immediately gain and the burdens of managing such a dangerous population.
While McCain proudly and repeatedly points to his battles with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who had to rebuild the U.S. military and fight a complex war, where was McCain in the lead-up to the war — when the military was being dangerously downsized by the Clinton administration and McCain’s friend, former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen? Where was McCain when the CIA was in desperate need of attention? Also, McCain was apparently in the dark about al-Qaeda like most of Washington, despite a decade of warnings.
My fingers are crossed that at the next debate, either Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney will find a way to address McCain’s record. (Mike Huckabee won’t, as he is apparently in the tank for him.)
— Mark R. Levin served as chief of staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese in the Reagan administration, and he is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host.
January 20th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Too bad FoxNews is openly campaigning for McCain at every moment possible.
Romney needs to call them out on it. They’re referring to McCain as a “front runner” when there is NO logical reason to conclude such a thing.
But don’t worry; once McCain starts campaigning out West in illegal immigration country, his “lead” will disappear more quickly than Bush’s promise to secure the southern border.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:22 am
Somehow, as soon as possible, the McCain myth of national security competence has to be tackled and the nonsense behind it unpacked.
This is crucial to any upcoming debates as well as the image presented during campaign stops and interviews. This is admittedly very rough, but sooner or later it will have to be said, admittedly more clearly. The campaign cannot escape this issue or talk around it forever.
It reiterates clearly the “Washington is Broken” them. We are not conducting the war abroad or the war at home, as we would like, not because we lack good generals or good soldiers, but because we have lacked leadership in Washington.
Here’s something, quite quickly spelled out which begins to draw the line between Mitt and McCain.What is says is that the War abroad is being fought by great generals and great troops, they do not need an ex-soldier in the White House, but someone who can fix Washington to allow them to do what they do best, “win wars’. What it says is that War at home does not need an ex-soldier or a Senator, but someone who can manage, organize and fix our Homeland Security efforts without flinching and without giving in to the New York Times.
The first step is to recognize that National Security can be segmented into two aspects, first Military Actioins abroad and, secondly, homeland security against terrorism. These are equally important. As soon as we see this, we recognize that, at best, McCain can only claim [incorrectly as explained below] any competence in the Military Area.
[a] The War at Home: This is something that Rudy Giuliani, for example, completely fumbled during the last debate, failing to indicate how, even though he wasn’t a military man by training, he would certainly have more experience and be the best man for organizing and prosecuting Homeland Security against Terrorism. In fact, anticipating myself, I believe that it would be quite fitting, perhaps droll, if Mitt actually said sometime during the course of an answer or a debate exchange that Rudy would be the ideal guy to run Homeland SEcuirty, the implementation of the Patriot Act, correlation of intelligence between agenciesa, interrogation and prosecution in HIS administration. His experience in the fight against organized crime would be ideal in a Romney administration
The issue of being President at a time when there is a need for Security at home against terrorism does not require a senior senator from Arizona with no executive or other experience and no organizational capabilities. McCain has no edge over anyone in this area. If anything, the failure of agencies to coordinate, the indecision about implementation of the Patriot Act, the Gitmo indecisiveness [see McCain on this] and so on, were failures of Washington, a Washington that is “broken”. Broken because it is disorganized, because it is embroiled in conflicts between different bureaucracies, because it is underfunded and not “managed” boldly from the top, and because it is mired in indecisiveness and political correctness, caused by a constant fear of the liberal media and their constant “critique” and inability to appreciate the need for security over the bogus ranting of the ACLU and others.
This takes bold leadership and unflinching control of the homeland security operation, something which GWB himself has not managed. All of a “broken” Washington is responsible for this underwhelming homeland security failure. Of course, at the very top, is the issue of allowing illegal aliens into the country over the past twenty years and not being concerned enough about the importation of al Queda and other terrorists. But that has been discussed elsewhere.
[b] The Military War: The first thing to realize is that, if anything has been unsuccessful about our prosecution of the War, it has not been the Military, and they have shown themselves to be extraordinarily capable, without Mr. McCain’s help, in fact. Our generals, from Tommy Franks, years ago, to General Petraus,, have done an extraordinary job. Our troops and brave young men and women have excelled and made us all proud to be Americans. Where has the problem been? In Washington, of course. Here’s where the ‘Washington is broken” argument arises full strength.
How can we expect our troops and our military leaders to “win” a war, which we, back home, do not back but which we conduct on the basis of political expediency, and reviews in the New York Times. The war is not a performance or concert to be left in the hand of New York Times critics.
A President does not have to be a general, but has to lead our own very good generals do what they do best, without hindering them and by supporting them fully. A President does not have to pretend to be a general, or attempt to take credit for the achievement of his generals [OK, guess who I'm talking about here] Press releases do not win wars, generals win wars, and none of us running in this primary contest is a general. On the contrary, he must mobilize this nation, starting in Washington to fully and effectively prosecute and win any war in which he puts Americans at risk. When Washington is broken, our military men, our generals are hobbled.
When Washington is broken, as it has been for the past two decades [during Mr. McCains time in Washington] what happens is that our armed forces have not been provided enough funds. For twenty years, Congress and the Senate sat on their hands, as we failed to increase the numbers of troops in our Armed Forces, as we failed to appropriate the spending we needed for modern weaponry. Even during the current War in Iraq, our troops had to make do without sufficient or state-of-the-art body armor, and their vehicles were two years late in being properly equipped and armored to protect against various terrorist bombing strategies.
Our troops, who risk their lives for us, have not been paid enough for what they do, less than doormen in fancy Manhattan buildings, and we wonder why more of them don’t enlist, and why there are not enough of them. They are the best expenditure this country could ever make. When they come home injured, our Veteran’s Hospitals and Walter Reade are in decay and they can’t get proper treatment.
This happens not because we don’t have an ex-soldier, or a general as President but because Washington has been broken all these past two decades. Mr. McClain seeks to claim “credit” singlehandedly for a policty such as the “Surge” in Iraq [even though the proposal that was implemented was vastly different from his, and put together by Generals in the field and not via Press Release, and even all of us here today, and certainly I myself were in agreement with that stronger effort.
The difference is that we were doing our jobs in the field whether as Governor of Massachusetts or Mayor of New York and not seeking to usurp credit via press release from President Bush for having had the courage to persevere and initiate the troop surge and General Petraus from conceiving “HIS” surge strategy.
And if those Senators in Washington, such as McCain and, of course, Hillary, seek to claim the credit for the surge that occurred this past year, then they must take the blame for the dilapidation of Walter Reade hospital, for the underfunding of our armed forces, for the shocking lack of support in weapons for our troops, for the twenty years of mismanagement and neglect.
No, the War has not proceeded well and we have, on occasion been bogged down precisely because “Washington has been broken”, while the Senate has rambled on in endless, often defeatist, usually disorganized gridlock I may not be a general but I do not how to fix an operation that is broken. And the American people know how to do so as well.
Provide adequate funding to our troops, to provide them with the best weapons, when they need them and not two years after they are on the battlefield. Recruit more men and women by paying them well when they are in harm’s way and treating them well when they come home. It is shameful how we have not done well by our fighting men and women. Provide the proper funding for all our Armed services so that the best fighting force in the world gets the best of weapons and technology.
Let our generals organize and conceive the strategies for fighting the war, instead of capitulating to liberal media bias or seeking to take credit in Washington for what our generals have done in the field. Let them fight the war to win, and let’s not tie their hands so that they can’t. That is what happens with a broken Washington”.
We have not yet “won the war” because Washington has been broken. It’s time we got on full-speed ahead with “winning” ..instead of alternately taking credit and throwing blame in a broken Washington
February 1st, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Mark Levin1
Mark Levin is right.
Where was McCain?
• When our soldiers were dragged in the streets of Somalia? Did he ask for the
resignation of the Secretary of defense during the Clinton presidency?
• When our embassies in Africa were attacked? What did he do?
• When the WTC was attacked in 1993?
• When the USS Cole was attacked. Did he ask Bill Cohen to resign?
Atef
NJ 07072