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Say what you want about Barack Obama’s ‘change’ message, just know if you go with J.o.hn M.c.Cain you’re saying yes to four more years of Bush style politics. While he’s still hawking that ‘maverick’ tag, don’t believe the hype, instead, let’s look at some statements by the senator. Recently M.c.Cain perked my interest when he came out _in favor _of FISA, warrantless wiretapping/eavesdropping and executive power. Funny thing is, he had the exact opposite opinion on these topics when he was asked in December 2007!
On Wednesday, I documented J.o.hn M.c.Cain’s complete reversal of views – in the last six months alone – on FISA, warrantless eavesdropping and executive power. M.c.Cain’s diametrically opposite views were contained in a questionnaire M.c.Cain completed for The Boston Globe last December (wherein he rejected many of the Bush/Cheney theories of presidential omnipotence and warrantless eavesdropping) and then a statement M.c.Cain issued this week to National Review (wherein he embraced those same theories in order to persuade the Right that he approves of and would continue Bush’s lawless surveillance policies).
Another source states more of what transcribed at the National Review:
A top adviser to Senator J.o.hn M.c.Cain says Mr. M.c.Cain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.
In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. M.c.Cain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance…
Furthermore, [M.c.Cain sounds like Bush Lite when discussing the war in Iraq](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/john-mccain-and-iraq---a_b_106071.html), witness these pontifications:On March 20, 2003, J.o.hn M.c.Cain said on television: “The Iraqi people will greet us as liberators.” Three days later he said: “This conflict is . . . going to be relatively short.” Thereafter M.c.Cain has become one of those guys, like Thomas Friedman, who sees the looming American victory in Iraq in six-month intervals. On September 10, 2003, M.c.Cain said: “I would argue that the next three to six months will be critical.” On February 4, 2007, he said: “We can know fairly well in a few months.” On September 12, 2007, he said: “The next six months are going to be critical.”
M.c.Cain claims to have seen for himself all of the wonderful progress being made in Iraq. He doesn’t like to dwell on the 4,100 American lives lost, and the 500,000 to 1 million Iraqi deaths. Neither does he wish to acknowledge the 2 million internally displaced people, nor the 2 million refugees who have fled the country since 2003, nor the gutted infrastructure, nor the profiteering from Haliburton and KBR and other American contractors, nor the hatred and animosity the occupation of Iraq has engendered throughout the world.
Nice eh? So next, look how often M.c.Cain (you know, the maverick) voted in line with the President’s position recently:
[…] it is a well known fact that Senator M.c.Cain misses the most votes in the Senate. In fact, he was crowned the most absent Senator in 2008. Therefore, when J.o.hn M.c.Cain even bothered to show up and vote in the Senate - which wasn’t often - he voted with Bush 100% of the time.
Ok, so that’s got to be some anomaly, surely a maverick senator wouldn’t agree with the most unpopular president in history all the time, let’s look at some earlier years:
2007
95%
5%
2006
89%
11%
2005
77%
23%
2004
92%
8%
2003
91%
9%
2002
90%
10%
2001
91%
9%
Of course this all makes more sense when you realize that Karl Rove is an adviser to the M.c.Cain Campaign. Ah, so M.c.Cain would be like a new puppet, but with the same puppetmaster pulling the strings. Is this what we want from our next president? If not, check out the Huffington Post’s OffTheBus project, now it “…is launching the John M.c.Cain News Hunt, an investigative project designed to get the real story on the media’s coverage of M.c.Cain – and document the ways the media is giving him a free ride.” More on McSame as the days go on… Meanwhile, Barack Obama continues to set him self apart from M.c.Cain - it’s a real difference, and a real change between the two men.