Thursday, November 6, 2008

No Tears For McCain

While I deplored the election results of 1992, I had no regrets about Bush the elder leaving the White House. He had betrayed his "No New Taxes" pledge and ran a cynical, inept campaign. The prospect of four more years of Bill and Hillary in 1996 was demoralizing, yet I had no sympathy for Dole. He was one of the phoniest politicians of my life time and the worse Republican candidate for President I have ever seen. And while I look upon the next Presidency with dred, I shed no tears for John McCain. Yes, he is to be honored for his service to our country in war time. And yes, he was right and Bush was wrong about the need for the Surge. Yet for his actions after his defeat by Bush in 2000, he has a prominent place in The Hand's (that's me!) personal role of dishonor. He opposed tax cuts that helped jump start the economy out of a recession Bush inherited from Clinton. His campaign finance reform bill, McCain-Feingold, made it harder for groups such as The National Right to Life to publicize candidates records while assisting non-U.S. citizens like George Soros to influence elections for liberals with his private fortune. McCain made his constituency the media, which turned on him once he actually ran against a Democrat. Yet the one thing above all that angered me was his role in the "Gang of Fourteen." Republicans in the Senate were about to end the Democrat's unconstitutional filibuster of Bush's nominees for Judicial appointment. But then, McCain and six other liberal Republicans joined with seven Democrats to block that action. This is going to have a negative impact on the Judiciary for a long time to come; Bush was stymied by McCain from putting a Conservative stamp on the lower Courts. Now Obama will fill the vacancies. For good press, McCain stabbed Bush and the Country in the back. For this, I have no remorse personally that McCain failed to fulfill the ambition that caused him to become untrustworthy.

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