The truth about McNasty
By Avedon from the Sideshow
The ubiquitous Steve Benen alerts us that the Associated Press is talking about how people don't realize that McShame is a right-wing crackpot. Okay, they didn't put it quite like that, but as long-time readers of The Sideshow may recall, this is something that has been worrying me for quite a while, and it may have something to do with why some people express their aggravation with Your Candidate by swearing that if their candidate isn't the nominee, they will vote for this raving right-wing loony, as if he is not, in fact, a right-wing loony who is whole parsecs farther to the right than even the other Democratic hopeful you don't like is.
But even the wonderful Steve Benen himself seems to be at least partially under this illusion.The next question, of course, is why McCain can vote like a conservative and be perceived as a moderate.
First, McCain used to be far less conservative than he is now. There's a reason he considered leaving the Republican Party in 2001 and joining the Democratic ticket in 2004. He worked with Dems on a variety of left-leaning caucuses, including campaign-finance reform and a Patients' Bill of Rights. McCain's rise to national prominence came in 2000, when he ran away from the GOP's far-right base. McCain came to believe, however, that he couldn't win the Republican nomination in '08 as a moderate, so he conveniently went through an ideological transformation. The problem is that most Americans aren't aware of the shift, and still perceive McCain as he was, not as he is.No, no, no. McCain was always a right-winger, but he associated himself with Feingold and with a couple of popular positions as part of a charade to clean up his image after he appeared to be terminally-tainted in the Keating Five scandal. Being known for bribery and corruption isn't really great on a politician's resumé, but this didn't mean he'd suddenly become Mr. Clean - on the contrary, campaign finance, despite the way the right-wingers talk about it, is a relatively harmless diversion in a media milieu where the Republicans already have 24/7 advertising for themselves on the airwaves, and they don't even have to buy the airtime.
What's really happened is that McCain has moved farther to the right as he's made his slow progress toward the nomination, and now he even votes for torture and hugs religious loonies. But he has never veered anywhere near the real center, and he's never going to. He may say he supports certain popular ideas (and, occasionally, when it doesn't matter, even vote for one or two of them), but on any measure where it counts, you won't find McCain behaving like he shares the values of ordinary Americans - or even ordinary career military people. He might give lip-service to it, but he votes against improving educational opportunities for veterans. He opposes any legislation that would place the rights of ordinary Americans above, or even at parity with, those of large corporations. He's not interested in helping the jobless, or those who were forced into predatory mortgage schemes, or the many who will die because of conservative policies. He thinks our troops are sissies because they don't want to kill and die and be maimed for no good reason. He has never changed his tune about his opposition to reproductive freedom. He doesn't even pretend to support universal healthcare.
Further reading: McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, by libertarian author Matt Welch.
Free Ride: John McCain and the Media by David Brock and Paul Waldman.
The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him and Why Independents
