McCain Problems Compounded

Do I really need to point out McCain's big flaw? Just to be safe, I will.

I'm gonna feel a little bit like the Daily Show here, but all this stuff really is true.

John McCain had the best line of the campaign when during the third debate, he looked Senator Obama right in the eye and said, "I am not President Bush, and if you wanted to run against him you should have run four years ago." McCain has so consistently abandoned everything that made him such a wonderful candidate in 2000, in order to have a fighting chance with the armada of foolish conservative voters that are more Pro-Bush than McCain will ever be (90% voting be damned).

"Incensed, McCain ran ads accusing Bush of lying and comparing the governor to Bill Clinton, which Bush said was "about as low a blow as you can give in a Republican primary". An anonymous smear campaign began against McCain, delivered by push polls, faxes, e-mails, flyers, and audience plants. The smears claimed that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock (the McCains' dark-skinned daughter was adopted from Bangladesh), that his wife Cindy was a drug addict, that he was a homosexual, and that he was a "Manchurian Candidate" who was either a traitor or mentally unstable from his North Vietnam POW days. The Bush campaign strongly denied any involvement with the attacks"


After it was clear McCain was the GOP nominee, he said this to Chris Matthews:


So I guess that's why McCain repeatedly let the RNC run ads saying Obama was either (a) anti-American (b) cavorted with domestic terrorists (c) a godless Christian or (d) corrupt, with corrupt friends, and used those corrupt friends to register voters (see: ACORN)

Secondly, I want to throw up when McCain gets sucked into the conservative clamoring to shout "Drill Baby Drill" at any event McCain has. He is in such a tough spot, to keep Bush's people happy, that he and Sarah Palin both say the following any time they are in a red state:

John McCain Will Put America On The Path To Eliminate the Strategic Threat From Oil:

To Mitigate The Threats Posed By Our Dependence On Foreign Oil, We Must Increase Oil Production Here At Home. We have proven oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production of another 18 billion barrels of oil. It is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions and to put our own reserves to use.

I don't think McCain ever wanted to do this, but once he picked Sarah Palin, he realized the stupid conservatives listen to Palin, so adopted her views on drilling for oil...giving Obama the opportunity to push the "McCain is in the pocket of Big Oil" line. Even T. Boone Pickens said that drilling here in America is one of the stupidest things we could possibly do right now. I really hope if McCain is the president, that the Democratic Congress will fight him on this and knock some sense into him, cause that's their job. McCain so frequently abandoned his own principles, that each time he did it he pushed more voters away than he reeled in, and that's why he's losing right now. The Economist thinks he can win, but he has a lot to do before tomorrow.

On the other hand, McCain has a totally fantastic energy proposal that I wasn't even aware of. If he had spoke of this more in public I think people would have listened.

Now, one of McCain's wash issues is the Iraq War. It helps him when people ponder what Obama would do about the situation, and it hurts him when people look at it and say, "Oh, crap. We're still there." McCain is right about how to get out of there...anyone who claims he was wrong about the surge hasn't read anything. And so, what McCain's problem with the Iraq issue is that hurts him at the polls, isn't even his own views: it's what Joe Biden says McCain's views are. Because Joe Biden is a liar. In a Sept. 24 speech, Biden said this:

"[Mccain] would continue what he called the Bush administration’s wrong-headed approach to the conflicts in the Middle East, endangering American security.

Cute, but Biden was arm-in-arm with McCain about Iraq a year ago.

From the Congressional voting record encyclopedia:
Iraq War position

Biden agreed with the administration's assertion that Saddam Hussein needed to be eliminated. The Bush administration rejected an effort Biden undertook with Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) to pass a resolution authorizing military action only after the exhaustion of diplomatic efforts. In October 2002, Biden supported the final resolution of support for War in Iraq. He continues to support the war effort and appropriations to pay for it, but has argued repeatedly that more soldiers are needed, the war should be internationalized, and the Bush administration should "level with the American people" about the cost and length of the conflict.

More (I actually admire Biden's fervent resistance on the surge, but he's just wrong):
"I want to make it clear that I totally oppose the surging of additional American troops into Baghdad... I think it is contrary to the overwhelming body of informed opinion... A surge of up to 30,000 American troops cannot have any positive effect except for only temporary... We have to make it clear to the Iraqis that in this quarter, we're going to begin to draw down American troops... The overwhelming reason for that is we must force a political settlement... They must understand that there is no prospect for us to be able to bring peace to Iraq if the Iraqis don't want peace as much as we do." ~ Biden

Then, in one of Biden's most admirable solutions for Iraq, he got legislation on the board, but Bush ignored it because the Republicans had a majority. I read between the lines though, and think that Biden's plan was in effect an "alternative surge" plan:
First Senate bipartisan Iraq war consensus

On September 26, 2007 the Senate approved a non-binding resolution 75-23 which endorsed a political settlement in Iraq that would divide the country into three semi-autonomous regions. With 26 Republican votes it did not force President Bush to take any action, but represented a milestone in the Iraq debate. The plan envisioned a federal government system for Iraq, consisting of separate regions for Iraq’s Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish populations. ~ Congresspedia

No doubt that plan would have required additional troops to enforce these areas and get them stabilized. 30,000 troops, perhaps? I know that's cruel, but Biden's attempts to illustrate Iraq as one of McCain's faults are somewhat hollow.

McCain still has a chance to win on Tuesday, but he has to insulate himself from all of the dangerous flak coming at him from both the Republican wackos and his Democratic opponents, and convince the American people that he is the more pragmatic leader, not George Bush, Junior.

Lastly, I got this chart in a McCain email today. It's very informative:
Chart