{"id":7136,"date":"2006-04-13T14:48:26","date_gmt":"2006-04-13T18:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7136"},"modified":"2006-04-13T14:48:26","modified_gmt":"2006-04-13T18:48:26","slug":"no-he-really-is-a-conservative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/no-he-really-is-a-conservative\/","title":{"rendered":"No, he really is a conservative"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slate’s [tag]Jacob Weisberg[\/tag] wrote a provocative piece<\/a> yesterday arguing that liberal critics of [tag]John McCain[\/tag] are just confused. We think he’s a conservative whose reputation as a “maverick” is little more than media hype and an effective public relations strategy. We agree with Paul [tag]Krugman[\/tag]’s analysis<\/a>: “The bottom line is that Mr. McCain isn’t a moderate; he’s a man of the hard right.”<\/p>\n

Weisberg argues that [tag]McCain[\/tag]’s liberal critics are just too “literal-minded.” All they have to do, Weisberg argues, is wait for the Republican primaries to end to see the “more appealing John McCain come roaring back.”<\/p>\n

Democrats alarmed by crossover affection for McCain usually begin by complaining about his down-the-line anti-abortion voting record<\/a>. But McCain’s smoke signals spell out something different — an unsuccessful attempt to back away from a mandatory position he no longer believes in, if he ever really did. […]<\/p>\n

A similar pattern describes his views on gay rights. I remember McCain telling me during an interview in the mid-1990s about how a gay member of his staff sensitized him to the issue. When he ran for president in 2000, he won the endorsement of the Log Cabin Republicans. The Advocate calls him “notoriously pro-gay.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not surprisingly, I don’t find this terribly persuasive. Weisberg suggests it’s easy to see McCain as a progressive reformer just so long as we “discount his repositioning a bit.” This is a bit like saying, if we discount Nixon’s criminal abuses of power, his presidency wasn’t all bad.
\n
\n“Repositioning”? On abortion, McCain fundamentally opposes abortion rights. It’s one of the handful of consistent policy positions McCain has always kept throughout his political career. When South Dakota passed a sweeping ban on abortion last month, even in cases dealing with rape victims, McCain said he supported the measure. Weisberg calls this “repositioning”; I call this “rigid right-wing ideology.”<\/p>\n

On gay rights, McCain proudly endorsed<\/a> an Arizona ballot initiative that would change Arizona’s Constitution to ban gay marriages and deny government benefits to unmarried couples. McCain is “pro-gay”? I don’t think so.<\/p>\n

Weisberg suggests that arguments like these are overly literal, but what, exactly, am I supposed to do with the information? McCain is taking unwavering, far-right policy positions, while cozying up to Jerry Falwell, voting for Bush’s tax cuts, and inexplicably supporting the war. If the argument is, “Don’t worry, McCain doesn’t mean it and he won’t act on it in office,” I hardly find it reassuring. If we accept Weisberg’s argument at face value, under the best case scenario, McCain is a dishonest, cynical panderer who’s willing to hide his true beliefs for short-term political gain. And under Weisberg’s scenario, this is supposed to be a good<\/i> thing.<\/p>\n

Weisberg sees an elaborate strategy, whereby McCain pretends<\/i> to be a hardline conservative, just long enough to win the nomination. As soon as that’s out of the way, McCain’s liberal critics can then, Weisberg suggests, sit back and enjoy McCain’s genuine “Teddy-Roosevelt-progressive”-like self.<\/p>\n

When it comes to the next president, who’s willing to take that chance?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slate’s [tag]Jacob Weisberg[\/tag] wrote a provocative piece yesterday arguing that liberal critics of [tag]John McCain[\/tag] are just confused. We think he’s a conservative whose reputation as a “maverick” is little more than media hype and an effective public relations strategy. We agree with Paul [tag]Krugman[\/tag]’s analysis: “The bottom line is that Mr. McCain isn’t a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7136","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=7136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}