It is interesting, Senator McCain, how you, in an effort to get more Republicans aboard your presidential ship, how you push two buttons you hope will achieve immediate success: 1) accusing the Democrats of “surrender”; 2) invoking the name of Ronald Reagan as you proclaim yourself to have been an early foot soldier in the “Reagan Revolution.”Since you brought up the subject of surrender, let us explore it with you and Reagan. Beginning with yourself, what about that disgraceful 2000 Republican primary campaign in South Carolina when the forces of George W. Bush, led by Karl Rove, attacked your wife as a harlot, attacked your mental stability, and used stereotypical racism by alleging that you had a “black” daughter, meaning the little girl you adopted from Bangladesh?
Many of us attacked this shameful scorched earth style of savage and thoroughly repugnant campaigning. At one debate with Larry King moderating you demanded that Bush not even touch you.
So what happened at the end? You were seen embracing and being embraced by George W. Bush. I have seen that scene repeated many times with the same visceral feeling of disgust being shown by you as your body tightens up and recoils. You know what Bush was responsible for and you detest him for it, but rather than embrace principle and tell him as well as his ruthless organization what you think of them you swallowed your distrust and detestation in the interest of political expediency.Could we not say that this embodies surrender on your part?
Now you take credit for tackling corruption in government. You went after lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Here is the question many of us have asked: Why did you not extend your committee’s investigation beyond lobbyists to fellow Senate members? As one political analyst bluntly put it the other day, “It’s one thing to jail the johns but what about going after the whores?”
Once more it appears that expediency won the day, Senator McCain. You capture headlines by going after Abramoff but know just where and when to pull your investigative wagon to a halt.
Could we not say that this embodies surrender on your part?
After you used your wife’s fortune to secure election to the Senate as a Reagan corporate Republican you became one of the “Keating Five,” a distinction you would prefer the body politic to forget.
In 1987 it was revealed that you were one of five Senators who took huge campaign contributions from so-called savings and loan entrepreneur Charles Keating, a huckster who bilked a fortune out of seniors seeking assistance on the best means of investing and gaining interest on their retirement money.
In return for Keating’s generous campaign assistance, you and your four colleagues pressured government regulators to spend their time and attention elsewhere rather than to probe Keating’s dirty dealings, which ultimately saw him convicted and sent to federal prison.
Johann Hari of London’s Independent quoted your response to the Keating tragedy: “I did it for no other reason than I valued (Keating’s) support.”
Senator McCain, did your activity on Keating’s behalf embody surrender?
Now you seek to link yourself to Reagan to gain the worthwhile support of such noble Republicans as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. You even finally came around and embraced Bush’s tax cuts, modeled on the old Reagan formula.
Those tax cuts produced results for both Reagan and Bush respectively, not to mention America. When Reagan left office his tax cuts heavily skewed toward the rich had tripled the national debt to $3 trillion.
After four more years under Reagan’s Republican successor George Bush the Elder the figure rose another trillion, meaning a quadrupling of the national debt to $4 trillion.
Reagan and the elder Bush were pikers compared to the younger Bush and his tax cut efforts. The younger Bush began with a surplus and soon extended that into what resulted in a mad rush toward economic oblivion.
The cuts you earlier opposed as wasteful and now support brought America from a surplus to the early prospect of a $10 trillion debt, the highest in the history of the planet and larger than all of America’s previous debt combined.
Congratulations, Senator McCain, for surrendering to the wild-eyed Bush neocons in the realm of fiscal sanity.
Your hero Ronald Reagan surrendered when he on the one hand put Iran at the top of the world embargo list and denounced it as a pariah, but secretly cut an arms for hostages deal with his own self-declared devil.
Senator McCain, was that not surrender on Reagan’s part?
How about those Kurds in Iraq’s northern provinces that were subjected to genocide by ruthless dictator Saddam Hussein? Did Reagan stand up to Saddam then, Senator? No, he was too busy cutting oil deals with him in exchange for weapons, including information in the development of chemical weapons.
Senator, Saddam gassed those people and murdered them ala Hitler and the Jews in World War Two, while Donald Rumsfeld shook Saddam’s hand and smiled while a new oil for weapons deal was announced.
Was that surrender, Senator McCain?
How about that moment during Reagan’s second debate with Mondale in the 1984 presidential race, Senator? While most of the mainstream media was looking the other way your hero Reagan said that the Director of the CIA was ultimately responsible for intelligence activities.
Mondale disagreed, saying that the ultimate responsibility rested under the Constitution with the President of the United States.
Innocent people, including women and children, were being gunned down on Central American streets, places like Gautemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Meanwhile CIA operatives had helped along this cause by preparing an assassination manual.
Was this abdication to decency and surrendering to mob rule by thugs a surrender, Senator McCain?
You get the idea. You and your hero Ronald Reagan bear the same badly tarnished feet of clay.
