A man wished to purchase an Ass, and agreed with its owner that he should try out the animal before he bought him.He took the Ass home and put him in the straw-yard with his other Asses, upon which the new animal left all the others and at once joined the one that was most idle and the greatest eater of them all. Seeing this, the man put a halter on him and led him back to his owner.
On being asked how, in so short a time, he could have made a trial of him, he answered, “I do not need a trial; I know that he will be just the same as the one he chose for his companion.”
Maverick Republican Senator John McCain has a reputation for making the phrase “politics makes for strange bedfellows” more than a unusual event. A review of McCain’s record shows who “he chose for his companion.”
McCain-Lieberman
In January of 2003, John McCain worked with Joe Lieberman to propose a bill to fight global warming. Two things first: he’s working with Joe Lieberman, the vice-presidential candidate for Al Gore, and he’s working with the global warming alarmists. That alone should raise some eyebrows, but then you see what the bill they propose would do:
Proponents will undoubtedly argue, as they did last fall, that we need not worry about the bill’s economic impact because Phase I is just a “modest” first step in addressing global climate change. A recent Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysis suggests otherwise. According to EIA, Phase I would increase: gasoline prices by 9 percent in 2010 and 19 percent in 2025; natural-gas prices in the industrial and electric-power sectors by 21 percent in 2010 and 58 percent in 2025; and electricity prices by 35 percent in 2025.
Further, Phase I would reduce U.S. GDP by $760 billion during 2004-2025 (or $290 billion in present value). For comparison, consider that Congress has appropriated $135 billion to pay for the war in Iraq.
And the costs do not stop there. Does anyone believe for a moment that enacting Phase I would appease rather than embolden the Kyoto lobby — or that enacting Phase I today would not make it easier to enact Phase II tomorrow? Phase I would impose Kyoto-like emission caps on major U.S. companies. Once subject to such regulation, firms would have an incentive to lobby for the treaty’s ratification in order to gain access to Kyoto’s emissions-credit market.
The American Conservative Union said the McCain-Lieberman bill:
…contains many of the dangerous and disastrous provisions of the international climate treaty negotiated in Kyoto years ago that the Senate rejected by a 95-0 vote. And — like the “undead” — it’s about to rise from the grave once again to haunt us.
According to a June 2003 report by the Energy Information Administration at the U.S. Department of Energy, this legislation would increase electricity rates by 46%, natural gas prices by 79%, and the cost of gasoline by as much as 40 cents a gallon.
The Energy Information Agency also estimated that the Climate Stewardship bill could reduce the size of the economy by $106 billion, with economic output and personal income both reduced by the legislation.
The bill was ultimately defeated in October of 2004, but Joe and John returned in 2007 with the The Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act. McCain said, “we continue to learn more about the science of climate change and the dangerous precedence of not addressing this environmental problem. The science tells us that urgent and significant action is needed.”
McCain-Feingold
From the Bill of Rights:
Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…
That is exactly what this law does. McCain, along with liberal Democrat Russ Feingold, introduced this bill and saw it passed in January 2002. It abridges the freedom of speech because it “bans all broadcast political advocacy advertising that mentions candidates by name, beginning 60 days before the election.” It prohibits free speech.
Reason Magazine writes:
Apologists for the law argue that groups can still broadcast their ads outside of election season; they can still run print ads; they can raise “hard money” for their ads; they can simply avoid all references to political candidates. All true, and all irrelevant. For the government to justify abridging a core civil right by pointing to other activities that are still legal is, shall we say, Putinesque.
In June of 2007, lovers of liberty had cause for hope. The Supreme Court sided with the Constitution, barely, when they “disallowed the application of the McCain-Feingold law to a series of television ads run by Wisconsin Right to Life (“WRTLâ€) that audaciously called upon Wisconsin citizens to call their United States Senators (including Sen. Russ Feingold (D.-Wis.)) about filibustering against President Bush’s judicial nominees.”
The Justices in dissent of the opinion were Souter, Ginsberg, Stevens and Breyer. They are the liberal faction on the court. Who did John McCain side with upon learning of this decision? The liberals:
Sen. John McCain called it “regrettable” that a split court has “carved out a narrow exception by which some corporate and labor expenditures can be used to target a federal candidate in the days and weeks before an election.”
To McCain, it’s regrettable that some liberties were returned to the citizens.
McCain-Kennedy
On May 9, 2007, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, better know as McCain-Kennedy, was introduced in the United States Senate. Conservatives were outraged. McCain, Senator for a border state, was working with one of the most liberal Democrats in America to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.
Human Events, the preferred newspaper for President Ronald Reagan, wrote:
S. 1033 amounts to a cruel joke on the American people. There’s no “guest†to its “guestworker†program. It’s all about permanent residence, perpetual wage depression, taxpayer subsidy for those who hire cheap foreign labor and a powerful incentive for even more illegal immigration. It puts amnesty first, enforcement last (or never).
S. 1033 is counterproductive. It would actually make things worse.
That same month, Mitt Romney came out in opposition of the bill, saying:
I strongly oppose today’s bill going through the Senate. It is the wrong approach. Any legislation that allows illegal immigrants to stay in the country indefinitely, as the new ‘Z-Visa’ does, is a form of amnesty. That is unfair to the millions of people who have applied to legally immigrate to the U.S.
“Today’s Senate agreement falls short of the actions needed to both solve our country’s illegal immigration problem and also strengthen our legal immigration system. Border security and a reliable employment verification system must be our first priority.”
Rather than address the concerns of fellow Republicans, McCain responded to the criticism of his bill by joining a chorus of other liberal Democrats and labeling all who spoke out against it as racists, as he had before. In 2006, he said on the Senate floor:
“What next – are we going to say work-authorized immigrants are going to have to ride in the back of the bus?”
Does that sound like a conservative or a liberal to you?
And McCain said he would sign the bill if it came to him as president:
It’s also important to note that this isn’t the first bill McCain co-sponsored with Kennedy. In 2005, he joined with Kennedy to expand the use of guest worker visas. In 2006, he co-sponsored the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act.
McCain again sides with the left, showing us once again that we need to lead him back to where he came from.
Endorsements
There are few newspapers in America better know for their liberalism than the New York Times. In 2000, the New York Times endorsed Al Gore in the General Election. In 2004, they went with John Kerry. Now, John McCain has been endorsed in the Primaries.
I find it outrageous that McCain would accept this endorsement, not because he is such a strong conservative, but because of all the instances of the Time revealing national security secrets. Time and time again, our national security has been damaged by the Times, yet John accepts the endorsement with a smile.
One more thing that makes this even more mystifying, is the idea that the Times’ publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. advocated McCain’s death in Vietnam:
One day, the elder Sulzberger asked his son what Pinch calls, “the dumbest question I’ve ever heard in my life.” If an American soldier runs into a North Vietnamese soldier, which would you like to see get shot? Young Arthur answered, “I would want to see the American get shot. It’s the other guy’s country.” Some Sixties activists have since thought better of their early enthusiasms. Pinch hasn’t.
The list of other liberal papers that have endorsed McCain is legion: Boston Globe, Philadelphia Enquirer, Des Moines Register, Kansas City Star…and McCain has them all listed on his website, showing how beloved he is by liberals across the country.
His political endorsements are also left of center and come across more as a RINO march than a list of conservatives. Mel Martines, Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham, Trent Lott, Olympia Snow…all people who are considered Republicans in Name Only. Senator Joe Lieberman has also lent his name to the McCain campaign. The latest endorsement came from a governor who just had his universal health care proposition shot down but the Democrats in his Congress. Arnold spent a lot of time in his speech talking about how McCain would help stop global warming. I would love to quote him, but so far, I have not been able to find a transcript, video or news story that repeats that section of the speech. If I were into conspiracies, I might think the media didn’t want people to know about it. The same media that adores McCain.
John McCain is lauded for reaching across the aisle. I have shown some of what he tries to accomplish when he does.
The moral of this fable: A man is known by the company he keeps.
Related posts:
