Is McCain moving the goalposts?

January 4, 2007

Now that we’ve identified the “McCain doctrine,” might the idea’s namesake be moving the goal posts? I think so.

Let’s review quickly. In late November, McCain insisted that “we will not win this war” without additional combat forces in Iraq. Maybe he meant it, maybe it was a calculated strategy whereby McCain could separate himself from Bush’s failed policy by calling for additional troops he didn’t expect the president to send. (Robert Reich suggested it’s a way for McCain to “effectively cover his ass. It will allow him to say, ‘If the President did what I urged him to do, none of this would have happened.'”)

Now the president appears ready to take McCain’s advice, giving the senator what he didn’t want: ownership of a disastrous war. It’s exactly why John Edwards labeled escalation in Iraq the “McCain doctrine,” because the policy Bush is poised to announce early next week is McCain’s idea.

Except McCain may be trying to back away from that this, too. On the Today show this morning, Matt Lauer asked McCain about the war. McCain said, “I think we can still win; I think we can do it by a significant increase in troops.”

Lauer asked, “Is this a number’s game? Will 20,000 do the job in your opinion?” McCain responded, “I’m not sure…. To make it of short duration and small size would be the worst of all options to exercise, in my opinion.”

Call me overly sensitive, but it certainly sounded as if McCain was preemptively distancing himself from the president’s soon-to-be-announced policy.

Let’s be clear — asked today if 20,000 troops was the right number, McCain said, “I’m not sure.” Asked the same question in October, McCain was sure.

Republican Sen. John McCain, a possible 2008 presidential candidate, said Friday the United States should send another 20,000 troops to Iraq.

A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain said increasing U.S. forces would require expanding the standing Army and Marine Corps – a step the Bush administration has resisted. He also reiterated his opposition to a hasty U.S. withdrawal.

“If we leave … the fighting will evolve into chaos there,” McCain told reporters after speaking at an event for local Republican candidates.
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Reporters asked him to elaborate on his statement last week in Iowa that more combat troops are needed in Iraq to quell a “classic insurgency.”

“Another 20,000 troops in Iraq, but that means expanding the Army and the Marine Corps,” he said. “It’s not just a set number.”

Indeed, this morning, Lauer suggested to McCain that it was “good news” that the president had come around to McCain’s way of thinking. Lauer said it was Bush effectively admitting, “McCain was right; he was ahead of the curve.”

McCain smiled, but didn’t respond. Lauer was effectively tying the entire escalation strategy around his neck, and the senator didn’t seem altogether comfortable with how it fit.

McCain may not like it, but it’s too late to distance himself now.

“If we leave … the fighting will evolve into chaos there,” McCain told reporters ”

Well no wonder they’re against evolution. They don’t know what the word means.

  • McCain’s been fit with his albatross and now he’s not sure if his bad luck talisman is big enough. What a chump. Such poor political instincts don’t bode well for a successful presidency. He also fails to take into account that there are other options for resolving this conflict besides more killing and more coffins at Andrews AFB. The only thing worse than supidity is stupidity with blinders on.

  • John Edwards knows a lot about poverty, after all, he’s helped throw a lot of people into it with:

    – his co-sponsorship of H-1b visas,

    – his support for illegal aliens,

    – his vote for MFN-China

    but what about stuff like iraq war and the patriot act?

    well, he voted for them too

    About the only thing you can say for Edwards is, he spent so much time running for president that he didnt have time to do more damage as senator

    You’ve got to ask yourself – ‘what did he do, with the power he had, when he had it?

  • Lauer asked, “Is this a number’s game? Will 20,000 do the job in your opinion?” McCain responded, “I’m not sure…. To make it of short duration and small size would be the worst of all options to exercise, in my opinion.”

    Sounds to me like Pres. McCain would have to re-institute the draft to accomplish his vision of victory in Iraq.
    “Another 20,000 troops in Iraq, but that means expanding the Army and the Marine Corps,” he said. “It’s not just a set number.”

    AndyF: Wow, lots of John Edwards hate. This post wasn’t even about Edwards. But since you brought it up….all the positions you list above can be attributed to Bush too. Thank goodness he spent so much time running for President that he didn’t have time do more damage…as….Pres…wait, never mind.

    Bush You’ve got to ask yourself – ‘what did he do, with the power he had, when he had it?

    Worst….President….Ever

  • Ed Stephan,

    Yep. He turns in that exact same screed on any post that even mentions Edwards. Pathetic really.

  • McCain is McToast. Barely any American supports his plan. In fact I think it’s just him, Bush, and Lieberman. Can we send them to Iraq? Yeah, I think that would get the job done.

  • who said i’m for bush?

    bush may be the worst president, ever

    but that’s pretty much the democrat strategy

    accuse any critic of secretly being for bush

    pretty lame, imo

  • who said i’m for bush?

    Clearly not you as you won’t state support for anyone. Yet you continually repost the exact same screed against Edwards everytime his name is even peripherally mentioned. Give it a rest, please.

  • Andy F –

    No one is going to take you seriously if you can’t even own up to your mistakes (ie. voting for Bush). I know, I know, that is the GOP’s mantra – “cover your ass”.

  • Andy F, why do you have a bug up your ass about Edwards? Did you lose your IT job when it was outsourced to India?

  • This makes me happy on two counts:

    Senator McMultiplePersonalities is getting his cojones crunched and his innate dishonesty is being revealed often and early.

    BushBrat may try to shift the blame for this clusterfuck to the McCainiac but not only will it not work, I’m always glad to see Repugnants shoving each other under the steam roller. I wonder how Mack feels about bending over on the Torture Your Corpus bill?

  • Some fun quotes from the interview:

    “we [the Republicans] forgot why we came to washington”
    “we valued power over principle”

    heh.

    He did some whining about how mean the Democrats were, when the Republicans allowed amendments to be offered in 1994 (not a word about recent Republican thuggery of course)

    Re Iraq: “I knew it was going to be a long war”

    and… you told us that… when?

    paraphrased, from around 10:00 mark… “if increasing the troop levels is a misjudgement, it’s a [political] price I would willingly pay.”

    Ya gotta wonder if his marbles are under the couch or what. It’s all about John McCain, not the kids who will die because of idiots like him.

  • Anyway, back to McCan’t.

    Yes, I was certain four months ago that McCan’ts call for more troops was, as Robert Reich so ably pointed out (damn he’s good for a short guy), nothing more than a trick to distance himself from Boy George II’s failed war. Now I’m convinced that BG2’s ignoring Casey and the JCS to put more troops into Iraq is exactly meant to tie McCan’t to the Iraq war failure. However, McCan’t can live in fantasy land, imagining there are tens of thousands of more troops we could send to Iraq (which, as Murtha knows, there aren’t) while BG2 is stuck with a reality of there only being maybe 9,000 to 15,000 possible troops to find, and them useable only for a short duration. So McCan’t can always claim he was calling for more and for longer than BG2 can provide.

    The trick of course is to point out that McCan’t numbers are fantasies, and thus the only honest response from him is that we can’t put enough into Iraq to do the job so we should (morally) get all the men and women we have in there out. Hopefully in a slightly better manner than we did under Ford in South Vietnam.

    And Andy, give it a rest. Hillary is not paying you enough to keep looking like a fool.

  • I have trouble understanding the troll mentality. Why do people hang out in places where they’re routinely raked over the coals? Is it a persecution complex? I could understand somebody getting a dig in sporadically, but the way some of these trolls obviously hang around reading CB every day, what on earth possesses them?

    “The Democrat strategy?” Please, Andy, don’t pretend to be anything but a Rethug when you insist on using their bogus terminology even as you feign innocence. Methinks thou dost protest too much.

    Please just go away to someplace where your incisive political commentary will be more appreciated. We’d all be happier, you included.

  • I forgot to mention that McNutjob also threw out the “fight em over there, not here” meme, but he tried to tone it down a bit, saying that if we fail to win in Iraq, we’ll have to fight the extremists in the region and elsewhere.

    ooohhh, scarey. I live elsewhere!

    Hey McDoofus, even if we win in Iraq we’ll be fighting extremists “in the region and elsewhere” FOREVER. What an ass you are, with your scaremongering bullshit.

  • Umm “democrat strategy”? The only ones inserting “democrat” for “democratic” have been bushies and those who probably are not happy with anything on the Carpetbagger Report.

  • Andy. Didn’t I see that exact same quote here earlier this week under a different name. You blew a gasket because someone, I believe Lance, insinuated that you, or the person who originally posted those words, was a republican’t. Get a life little man.

    McCain, McCain, McCain… fuck the noose, the bodies should be hung around his neck. Because of his idiot political maneuvering, we are going to end up with more Americans in the dirt. I wish he would just go to an undisclosed location and leave governing up to the adults.

    How’s that song go, “He’s got high hopes….”

  • And Andy, give it a rest. Hillary is not paying you enough to keep looking like a fool.

    Chicken soup, meet monitor.

    She’s not even paying him enough for proper punctuation.

    …we’ll have to fight the extremists in the region and elsewhere.

    Newsflash Johnny-b-Quik: We’re already beset by extremists, starting with the extremely dangerous, dishonest and demented gang of thugs in the White House and of course ankle grabbing vote whores such as yourself.

    Tinfoil hat theory: McCainiac is being paid by ShrubCo (TM) to be a total assclown in order to take a bit of the heat of the WH.

  • To make it of short duration and small size would be the worst of all options to exercise, in my opinion.”

    I didn’t see the interview, but the obvious Lauer follow-up should have been to get St John to clarify if he’d prefer “escalation” rather than “surge”, since surge implies “short duration”. Would be nice to get these guys to actually stand by their terminology.

    As for Andy F (gag) – it’s obvious the little puss-puss is playing by the old – and very tired and discredited – “conservative” play-book of don’t address the substance of criticism or issues, but rather make personal attacks on anyone who disagrees with the “conservative” position. I’m sure Andy F agrees with that Bush is “worst. president. ever” because Bush isn’t “conservative” enough. (I put “consevative” in quotes because these guys wouldn’t know conservative if it bit them in the ass). Get it together Andy F – this is 2007 – that old tired stuff doesn’t work anymore.

  • “To make it of short duration and small size would be the worst of all options to exercise, in my opinion.” – McCain

    … The old “fighting a war badly is like bad sex” analogy.

  • Jeez, it’s all about size with McCain, isn’t it? Seriously, I would have thought a senator with McCain’s all-star military background (and I’m not speaking mockingly, it’s true) would have kept tabs on the state of the Armed Forces after leaving. Maybe somebody should tell him there are not 6 million people in the Army any more. He casually tosses around figures as if 30,000 – 40,000 trained troops would not cause the military to break a sweat, when it would cause it to break, period. I’m sure he’s aware that the “surge” will come from battalions rotated BACK IN early, and those due to rotate out being forced to stay on. Fresh troops will consitute a tiny minority. As I said, I’m sure he’s aware – but you’d never know it to hear him talk.

  • John Edwards knows a lot about poverty, after all, he’s helped throw a lot of people into it with:

    – his co-sponsorship of H-1b visas,

    – his support for illegal aliens,

    – his vote for MFN-China

    but what about stuff like iraq war and the patriot act?

    well, he voted for them too

    About the only thing you can say for Edwards is, he spent so much time running for president that he didn’t have time to do more damage as senator

    You’ve got to ask yourself – ‘what did he do, with the power he had, when he had it?

  • Andy seems to just copy and paste the same drivel into every available comment section. Andy, you’re entitled to have a negative opinion of John Edwards, but you’re wallpapering the wrong venue. Why don’t you go start an “I Hate John Edwards” blog? Then you can enjoy the adulation of flocks of people who share your opinion. I don’t think you’ll find many here.

    Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with a successful man vying for the leadership of the country. He doesn’t have to be rich, but that so often seems to go along with being successful. It sounds like you’d prefer the bag-boy at Applebees, you know – somebody down-to-earth and in tune with the problems of poor people, because he’s……well, poor. The problem is, when would he find time to run the country? Similarly, domestic economics is only one of the challlenges that will confront the next president. We’ve already seen the perspective a grade 6 education brings to foreign policy.

    If you won’t vary your message, you run the risk of it being simply ignored or blocked.

  • Bush has settled on a new policy:

    PURGE AND SURGE.

    Purge the military of all dissent, surge the number of US troops killed.

    Mission accomplished.

    -GSD

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