Friday, February 08, 2008

Who are these people? Part 2.

Yesterday Romney dropped out of the race leaving John McCain the presumptive GOP candidate. Immediately, the far right wing of the Republican party went into a frothing, fall-on-the-floor, frenzy.


Now, I won't vote for McCain for two reasons. One, he's a Republican and I'd rather put my hand in a wood chipper than put the GOP in charge of anything bigger than a lemonade stand.


The second reason? This:



I don't know him, but I'm sure John McCain is a great guy. He's an Annapolis graduate. Unlike some politicians I could name, his son is on active duty. He once put Jenny's brother in hack in flight school, which can only be to his credit. And as a well-connected POW, the North Vietnamese offered to let him go. McCain said no, he would stay as long as the other POWs stayed. That takes bigger balls than I've seen on anyone since Margaret Thatcher.

But as much as admire him, he's not my guy. I'm a liberal, he's a conservative. I don't agree with him about health care, the war, abortion and a whole host of other issues. Even his approach to campaign finance reform, which I'm all for, I think infringed on free speech. Just my opinion.

And all those people who worship Reagan as the epitome of conservatism, the same Reagan who ran up deficits, passed an amnesty bill for immigrants, and two of the largest tax increases in history, revile McCain because he's not conservative enough. Which leads me to ask that same old question:

Who are these people?

There's a guy here in North Carolina named Bob who runs a conservative blog called Confederate Yankee. I don't agree with Bob on much, but I think his heart's in the right place. He tries to keep news outlets honest, an admirable endeavor. I wish he'd focus his attention on some of the crap spewed by Fox News, Limbaugh, O'Reilly and others, but hey, it's his blog and he can do what he wants with it.

Yesterday Bob said he would hold his nose and support McCain. Here are some of the comments the uber-patriots left:

"McCain served US better in the Hanoi Hilton than in the US Senate. He should
go back there and serve US better, again."

"Screw him, and any other cheapshot chickenhawker. "

Ann Coulter says she'll vote for Hillary before McCain? James Dobson threatens a third party if he doesn't get someone with Goebbels-like credentials? Rush Limbaugh might actually stop molesting underage Dominicans long enough to campaign against his party's nomination?

Really?

Who are these people?

4 comments:

JD Rhoades said...

Oh, hadn't you heard? McCain's a leftist, according to the people at CPAC.

Anonymous said...

Confederate Yankee's heart is in the right place? Oi. He's another bitter redneck, though admittedly not the worst of them.

-Karl Knuckles

Jim Winter said...

My guess is McCain can't wait until the convention. He's had to kiss an awful lot of ugly babies with full diapers to get here.

So when he faces Hill or Barry in the debates this fall, they'll say, "Why, John, I thought your nose wrinkling was a sign of age. Now that I remember it, I never noticed until that day you made nice to Jerry Falwell."

Graham Powell said...

I don't understand this hatred of McCain either - and apparently most Republicans don't. In a recent poll he got like 70% favorable and only 20% unfavorable among Repubs.

I've always admired him and wished I could have voted for him back in 2000. In fact, McCain/Lieberman would be my dream ticket.