McCain's Shifting Target

Reid is perplexed. “I have no idea what he’s talking about,”

Reid is being deliberately kind. What he really means is “He has no idea what he’s talking about”

Of course anyone who by this point thinks a policy reversal on McCain’s part constitutes news should seriously reconsider professions. (I know I know, what would we do with the 7000 vacancies…….)

“McCain has elaborated in recent days, first as a statistician and then as an economist. “I am troubled by the fact that this report only represents the input of 28 percent of the force who received the questionnaire,” he said last Thursday of the Pentagon survey that found 70 percent of troops don’t care if gays are allowed to serve openly. “That is only 6 percent of the force at large.” On Friday, McCain blamed the nation’s flagging economy for his opposition. “I will not agree to have this bill go forward, and neither will, I believe, that 41 of my colleagues will either, because our economy is in the tank.”"

You could blame old age, senility or whatever. I personally think it’s homophobia. Or maybe his Maverick way of going against the stream just be be the odd man out.

He won’t ever support the repeal because he’s just that special. Captain ‘get off my lawn’ will do everything and say anything for DADT to remain in effect.

It is probably time to enact some mental illness rules, for those wanting to serve in the Senate.

Here are what I think are the reasons behind McCain’s incoherence and hypocrisy on this subject:
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1) His wife and daughter’s public advocacy on gay right’s embarasses him because they’re leading where he’s trailing behind public opinion and progress.
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2) His wife and daughter have gay friends and his old manly, man Navy’s buddies poke fun at him for having to entertain teh gay at his many houses.
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and, of course, most important:
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3) Obama wants it to end and that inexperienced smarty-panks jerk didn’t deserve to be president over a real mavericky American hero like McCain. (which hurt even more because his last presidential defeat was to a coke snorting, blue blood ‘Nam dodger)
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Basically, he’s just a cranky, bitter old man who cares about nothing but his own bruised ego.
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But MTP will still have him on every other week and the Beltway media types will still wonder where this bitter jerk came from. The answer, of course, is that he was always a cranky, bitter jerk. But man, that tire swing is so fun!

Well that’s an extreme way to get rid of liberals. I think if you wait for another election cycle it will be self-cleansing.

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We have record deficits, growing unemployment, pending bills on extending tax cuts and spending resolutions and Reid and the Democrats have their panties in a wad about DADT and the Dream Act. You right liberalism is a mental disorder

“These conspiracy theories are a distraction from the proper lessons of 9/11. And so it is imperative to confront them with facts. The innocent thousands who perished on that terrible day deserve to be remembered with honor and truth.”

- John McCain

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/an-opportunity/

“We have record deficits, growing unemployment, pending bills on extending tax cuts and spending resolutions and Reid and the Democrats have their panties in a wad about DADT and the Dream Act.”
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freep – You may think the government can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. But if folks like Snowe and Graham and Brown and Collins weren’t playing partisan games it should take the Senate all of about an hour to pass DADT repeal (House already passed it) so it shouldn’t distract from working on those other issues, which I agree are very important. But the real issue here isn’t what you cited above but McCain’s incoherence and that fact that his rationale for opposing DADT repeal changes almost daily. This whole, “we can’t do this until we deal with other stuff”, is a new excuse for him…before it was, “the troops don’t want” it, or “we can’t do this during wartime”, or, “they didn’t survey enough people”, or, “well the troops may not care but the chiefs do”, or, “who cares what Gates said because he never served in the military, even though he did.”
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Sounds a whole lot like the horrible campaign for president that he ran in 2008. Maybe we should just suspend goverment until we get those darned over $250K tax cuts passed?

You gotta love how every useful idiot/political activist/political lobbyist in the Washington/New York/American press corps thinks that McCain only had one worthless, disastrous, freakin’ civilian (i.e., Gates) and one equally disastrous member of the United States military (i.e., Mullen) in mind when McCain said, “The day that the leadership of the military ….”

Jon Stewart’s Black Knight (of Monty Python fame) mashup featuring McCain really highlights the insanity of McCain’s moving goalposts

“This whole, “we can’t do this until we deal with other stuff”, is a new excuse for him…”
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Actually, it’s not if you think back to the “I’m suspending my campaign” BS he tried to hand the nation when he was trying to dodge the first debate with Obama. The excuse seems to be working about as well this time.
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Post Presidential primaries McCain is an embarrassment to himself and the Senate.

#3 probably has something to do with it. McCain is just so bitterly contemptuous of Obama that if he came out in favor of dental care McCain would denounce flossing.
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Personally, I think that McCain took the “I’ll defer to the joint chiefs” position because, based on his archaic military experience, he never imagined a day when they would be OK with it. He could hide behind what he assumed was the military’s institutional bias and never have to admit his own personal bias publicly. The world has moved on and McCain has now been forced to repeatedly move the goal posts to keep from admitting his bias.

McCain and the press have used each other over the years and now that his ambitions to become President are over he’s returned to his conservative root. The liberals problem is all of the things that made him so valuable are now working against them. While I think DADT s/b repealed he has a point in not doing it in a lame duck session and because he’s McCain he has a lot of sway. The MSM liked the vatious ‘gang of’ deals when Bush was President but they’ll hate everyone from here on in. In the next congress he have 47 votes and very possibly more power than Harry Reid because as many as a dozen senators need to move well past the center toward conservatism. McCain is fabulous on spending, he is good on immigration, campaign finance now, good on defense, good on national security, good on Israel and getting better on global warming. He will support all cuts to GW funding. He will be a thorn in the side of the MSM the rest of his career. He no longer need them.

a lame duck session
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Is this a new thing? Why does Congress bother to meet between November and January if they aren’t supposed to do anything during a “lame duck session”?

“Well that’s an extreme way to get rid of liberals. I think if you wait for another election cycle it will be self-cleansing.”
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Being of sound mind, would be a bipartisan rule. It isn’t a moral judgement against the character, it is simply the recognition that people do contract thought disorders, from time to time.
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“We have record deficits, growing unemployment, pending bills on extending tax cuts and spending resolutions and Reid and the Democrats have their panties in a wad about DADT and the Dream Act. You right liberalism is a mental disorder”
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Thought disorders are more typically associated with losing touch with reality than juggling multiple issues, at one time. Suspicion of the outside world, imagining conspiracies behind everyday events, that sort of thing.

Not for major legislation. It’s called lame duck for a reason. 63 house members were just voted out of office because the people don’t approve if them. They damn sure don’t want them doing more damage on the way out.

as many as a dozen senators need to move well past the center toward conservatism
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We have 12 Senators left-of-center?!?
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Talk about moving goalposts…

We have 12 Senators left-of-center?!?
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Have to admit you’ve stumped me here. As you can tell I really enjoy politics and that’s the tactics as well as the ideology. I see it as a grand chess match and my visual image is star trek when they show their chess games as multi-board, multi-level. There are so many moving parts at different levels.

You have many more than 12 left of center. The problem is you need 40. 39 is no better than 29 or 19. This is why Obama keeping the Senate might be a political liability. While the Senate is in nominal Democrat control you have a large number of Senate Democrats desperate to show distance from Obama. I am not sure McConnell is that crafty operator my side needs but he’s in a better position than Reid.

“government can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. But if folks like Snowe and Graham and Brown and Collins weren’t playing partisan games”

What a red herring! The Democratically controlled House & Senate managed to pass the HC bill under the cloak of darkness without any Republican help. A bill that upends 16% of our economy but now its Republican partisanship is holding up these bills. What has Reid and Pelosi doing for the past 2 years, I mean besides telling us how wonderful they were while nothing was getting done.

All of these bills could have been brought up before the election. Want to venture a guess why they didn’t?

“McCain is just so bitterly contemptuous of Obama that if he came out in favor of dental care McCain would denounce flossing.”
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And of course Obama, Reid and Pelosi has warmly embraced any Republican ideas>

“I will not agree to have this bill go forward, and neither will, I believe, that 41 of my colleagues will either, because our economy is in the tank.”

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My question to McCain would have to be: Just what does the poor economy have to do with ending DADT? Is he honestly admitting that the Senate can’t work on more than one thing at a time? If so, then perhaps it is time McCain retire from public service.

Rdw56, please read this* -link- and tell me what you think of my “moving goalposts” comment.
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* a swamp-commenter linked to it a while back. I’d like to give credit where due, but I forgot who it was.

If the traditional media would find the ability to ignore every utterance of McCain and Palin, other, more sane voices might be heard.