{"id":15850,"date":"2008-06-12T14:30:24","date_gmt":"2008-06-12T18:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15850.html"},"modified":"2008-06-12T14:30:24","modified_gmt":"2008-06-12T18:30:24","slug":"on-the-biggest-issues-mccain-said-hes-been-totally-in-agreement-with-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/on-the-biggest-issues-mccain-said-hes-been-totally-in-agreement-with-bush\/","title":{"rendered":"On the biggest issues, McCain said he’s been ‘totally in agreement’ with Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2008, John McCain works hard to convince people he’s not just like George W. Bush. In 2005, John McCain worked hard to convince people of the exact opposite.<\/p>\n

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Looking over the transcript<\/a> from the June 19, 2005, episode of “Meet the Press,” the context of the video is actually slightly worse for McCain. Tim Russert read off a list of issues on which McCain and Bush appear to disagree and told the senator, “The fact is you are different than George Bush.” McCain responded, “No. No.”<\/p>\n

In fact, as the video shows, McCain pushed back aggressively against the notion that he’s different from Bush. “[O]n the transcendent issues, the most important issues of our day, I’ve been totally in agreement and support of President Bush,” McCain said. He added, “I will also submit that my support for President Bush has been active and very impassioned on issues that are important to the American people. And I’m particularly talking about the war on terror, the war in Iraq, national security, national defense, support of men and women in the military, fiscal discipline, a number of other issues. So I strongly disagree with any assertion that I’ve been more at odds with the president of the United States than I have been in agreement with him.”<\/p>\n

One could argue, I suppose, that this was in 2005, and McCain has reinvented himself since then, but then again, looking at his Senate voting record<\/a>, McCain voted with Bush’s position 95% of the time in 2007 and 100% of the time in 2008.<\/p>\n

McCain gets pretty annoyed when his critics talk about a “third Bush term,” but it’s hard to deny that McCain has already made the argument for us. He not only shares Bush’s agenda and platform, but McCain spent years telling national audiences that no one agrees with Bush more than he does.
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\nAnd as long as we’re on the subject, it’s also worth noting that McCain has not only spent years emphasizing his support for and similarities to George W. Bush, he’s even talked openly about following Bush’s lead when it comes to Dick Cheney<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In an interview he gave to the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes in 2006 for Hayes’s biography, “Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President,” McCain said: “I will strongly assert to you that he has been of enormous help to this president of the United States.”<\/p>\n

Going further, McCain even told Hayes in comments heretofore unpublished that he’d consider Cheney for an administration post.<\/p>\n

Asked whether he’d be interested in Cheney had the vice president not already have served under Bush for two terms, McCain said: “I don’t know if I would want him as vice president. He and I have the same strengths. But to serve in other capacities? Hell, yeah.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, in a year in which Americans are desperate for change, John McCain wants to keep Dick Cheney around and is “totally in agreement” with Bush “on the transcendent issues” of the day.<\/p>\n

As Matt Yglesias concluded<\/a>, “McCain’s just a guy who wants to continue most of Bush’s policies and admires Bush’s key henchmen and wants to keep them serving in government office. But that doesn’t mean he represents more of the same. It’s just a different kind of change<\/i> — hell yeah!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2008, John McCain works hard to convince people he’s not just like George W. Bush. In 2005, John McCain worked hard to convince people of the exact opposite. Looking over the transcript from the June 19, 2005, episode of “Meet the Press,” the context of the video is actually slightly worse for McCain. Tim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}