I'm very confused. Back in the late 90s, when I was a junior in high school, I did a research project for my current events class on the debate over campaign finance reform. (Yes, I know, I'm weird.) I came to it from the direction of the controversy over some of the Clinton campaign fundraising in the 1996 election (the cofffees, Al Gore's solicitation calls from his office, etc.). But I quickly became a lot more interested in Senator John McCain.
McCain was trying to leverage the current stink in order to change the laws governing who could donate to a politician or PAC and how much, which eventually became the McCain-Feingold law. I admired that McCain was so passionate about something that wasn't exactly popular with either party, and I admired that he was working with a liberal Democrat to sponsor it. I disagreed with his position on reproductive choice (still do), but if McCain had gotten the Republican nomination for president in 2000, I probably would've voted for him.
Fast-forward to present day, where McCain's reasons for opposing a repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" are getting increasingly bizarre. Others have deconstructed that much better than I could. It's so odd and out of character that you have to wonder why - seriously, what the hell is going on here?
Most of the time when a politician takes a position and absolutely does not move from it even if the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, it really is just about politics. Sure, sometimes the guy's a true believer, but most of the time he's just trying to draw a hard distinction from an opponent to either win an election or suck up to someone.
It's hard for me to believe that John McCain is a homophobe, mainly because I just don't want to believe that someone I still respect has that kind of evil in his heart. Which makes me wonder who he's trying to please. Despite his long-held anti-choice beliefs, social conservatives have always had a problem with McCain (which is one reason he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate). Surely he can't think that he needs to move to the right to keep his Senate seat. J.D. Hayworth may have given McCain a scare in his primary this year, but he still won in a landslide.
Does McCain want to run for president again? Or his he just trying to tap into Christian fundamentalists' deep pockets, even though he may not need their votes? Is it even worth it for McCain to chase their votes, or their money? Meaning, is there anything that McCain could do to convince this cohort that he's one of them?
The only other alternative is that McCain really does believe that gays don't belong in the U.S. armed services and that hetero servicemen and women can't handle serving with them. And it's really sad to think that such a distinguished veteran could have such a low opinion of the men and women who've followed him.
2 comments:
One of the great losses in the 2008 election was the sanity of the Republican party. The fact that Palin is still around shows that for SOME reason the GOP at some point said to themselves, "we are NOT going to be out-crazied by the Democrats!!!" Frankly i think McCain's position seems to be more about keeping the far right relevant than any belief he might have.
I think so, too. What I don't get is why he's working so hard to win the trust of people who a) are probably never going to trust him no matter what he does, and b) are a rapidly shrinking portion of the electorate.
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