John McCain the Phony

Professional former prisoner of war and Arizona Senator John McCain will now apparently make another run at nabbing the Republican presidential nomination. In his so doing, you will no doubt get the same old bullshit about what a maverick he is. The truth, though, is that McCain is just another rightwing hack.

Let's look at who the former pilot has in tow: Bruce Herschensohn, the failed GOP California Senate aspirant who decried the fact that the UN is filled with representatives of dictatorial regimes on the one hand then lamented that then President Jimmy Carter didn't crush the Islamic rebellion that toppled dictator Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, aka the Shah of Iran.

Yep, that is how you buy credibility in a Muslim region, by killing what may have been thousands of that religion's faithful and perhaps becoming bogged down in a perpetual guerrilla conflict after the U.S. had pulled out of Vietnam just a little over half a decade previous. That is not to also mention that the Soviet Union, which was barely hanging on at that point, felt that Iran was within its sphere of influence. A U.S. military action there could possibly have stoked tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets and given more spine to military and KGB hardliners, especially after what we had been doing in Afghanistan with the Mujahadeen.

So he obviously doesn't really believe in diplomacy, which has been Bush's big problem and he has no grasp of geopolitical realities. It doesn't say much for McCain that he would have this idiot as one of his advisers.

That is beside the fact that he doesn't agree that the federal government ought to aid victims of natural disasters. That falls right in line with Bush, who left everybody behind during Hurricane Katrina while he was on another vacation and only belatedly moved, albeit merely with a series of lame ass photo ops, when the criticism and outrage got to be crushing.

Moreover, Herschensohn is another echo from the Nixon White House days and if McCain is trying to set himself up as some kind of moral paragon, as his recent courting of wackjob religious fringies like Jerry Falwell showed, then his buddy Bruce, a Tricky Dick apologist, betrays that.

One also has to question how conservatives could vote for McCain anyway. Aside from the fact that he has the adultery thing going and his wife is part of the GOPP (Grand Old Pill Poppers), Bush and his campaign made insinuations during the 2000 primary campaign that McCain was a kind of Manchurian Candidate in the wake of the torture he endured whilst a prisoner in Vietnam. That leaves those conservatives now open to being charged with selling out the country by being willing to vote for somebody who may have been programmed by the Commies even if we all know that what was said about McCain in this connection is garbage.


Then there is John Weaver, his political strategist. Weaver also advised another wingnut, Phil Gramm, during his 1996 presidential bid.

McCain is also closely tied to advisers to Bush, as this list demonstrates, including the insufferable former Indiana Senator Dan Coates, who tried to help Bush get Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and who is hardly a stalwart defender of the First Amendment.

It's the same old shit. Don't fall for it. McCain is about as independent of the GOP establishment as Ed Gillespie.