Blogging McCain…

I’ve had a bit of blogapathy the last few days, not to mention I’ve been busy doing some other stuff. Its just one of those cycles of burn-out that I’ve come to understand is not unusual for long-term bloggers. Regardless of that, I d…

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Well, not having seen the WSJ article, it’s certainly more context, however taken, than I’d heard before. Mind you, I’m still not at all sold on a McCain candidacy. When I think that Ann Coulter was NOT joking in suggesting that she will vote for Hillary over McCain, it gives one pause…

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His reasoning the year before to not vote on a similar package is, however, less well thought out. It is one thing to argue he ‘voted for it before he voted against it’, but doing that a couple of years in a row, especially heading into an election year with a President that would have vetoed it doesn’t make much sense. Even Lindsey Graham was at a loss for words on that. Mind you his proposal a month later wouldn’t even begin to match what had come up on the Senate floor for him to vote on, but then he was deciding to run for President and you can’t very well pass something that you want to run on. Then there is his proposed foreign policy team from 2000, which was a bit much for Republicans then, also.

The internet means ‘reinventing yourself’ requires explaining your past actions and why you are changing your mind. I would actually like John McCain *more* if he would just talk about his record, tell us why lowering taxes has never been a priority with him save on the Presidential campaign trail, and why raising taxes and going after US industries is such a good thing. I do like his anti-pork stance and wish that he had been that way throughout his career. But every 4 years or so we are asked to forget what he has done in his career before that and accept that he will now be the ‘reformer’ (twice? three times?) and the ‘independent maverick’ (basically since voting to over-ride President Reagan’s vetoes on huge spending bills), plus something less than astute on the Constitution and the First Amendment… if you want to stop corruption via donations then the Senate can make its rules to bar those Senators taking such funds from writing, amending and voting on legislation from such backers. Plus make their calendars public as well as every function they attend as a Senator, not as a private citizen. But that would look at *ethics* as important, not restricting the American People from expressing their views. That might, however, take a few political risks and break up the ‘collegiality’ of the Senate… which hasn’t gotten us much for the past decade and some odd years… and it would require doing something tangible, immediate and hard to naysay.

Context does, indeed, mean a lot. Not just one time, but multiple times over a career. Tells me much, just not what you expect or necessarily want to find out.

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Well, thank you for that refreshing bit of information. I will tell Sean and Rush to include this in their next show. Context is everything. Leaving out the context is the pervue of Media Matters, MoveOn, dKos and Olbermann. Rush, et al, should know better.

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[...] needs to get out (hat tip to Flopping Aces): In 2001, with the bitter primary battle still fresh, Mr. McCain voted against the final Bush [...]

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