Er yes, well, I suppose if you strip away the fact that McCain's entire campaign consists of supporting a wildly unpopular war and running on his foreign policy credentials, then no, the fact that he doesn't actually know who the fuck we're fighting is probably not very relevant.
No way, a politician pandering to the people to get elected? I don't think that has precedent.
Who, exactly, is he pandering to with his support of the war? Trying to win votes from the 33% of the population that is going to vote for him no matter what isn't going to win him the election. Yes, he needs to make sure that 33% gets out and vote if he's going to have ANY shot at winning, but he also needs to avoid alienating the majority of the country by, for example, looking like he doesn't have a basic understanding of the central issue of his campaign.
Seriously, how many different ways do I need to phrase that basic point?
And are you, once again, deliberately misusing words just to confuse and irritate me?
And for the record: The most attractive thing about McCain for me personally is his rebel demeanor. In a culture of politicians he'll play the game long enough to gain the power he'll need to fix my fucking party government.
Guild,
Stop paying attention to the media portrayal of the man for one goddamn minute and look at his record.
He's not a maverick.
He's moderate on immigration, has his name on a campaign finance reform law from 6 years ago, and voted against the anti-gay marriage amendment. Somehow, this makes him a maverick who breaks with his party all the time.
Never mind the fact that he's in lockstep with the Republican Party on abortion, healthcare, education, and, most importantly, bombing everything that moves. Never mind that he has abandoned his principles on the religious right, Bush's tax cuts, and torture (TORTURE!) in order to win an election (something which, in your world, is somehow a positive trait). No, he's a man of principle who doesn't care what his party or his base thinks of him.
Hey, I can't say I blame you -- I thought the same thing about him up until around 2005. I guess the difference between you and me is that I've actually been paying attention for the last several years rather than just watching Chris Matthews jack off all over him.
Unless the democrats suddenly become fiscal conservatives. Then I'll just switch parties.
We are currently spending four thousand dollars a second on the war in Iraq.
Now, you can torture logic all you like about how McCain is actually against the war, or will be as soon as he enters office, or whatever nonsensical Rorschach attributes you want to place on him. But seriously, the Republican Party as fiscally-conservative myth kind of has trouble standing up to ten seconds' look at
the national debt.
THAT is Kazz's point. With the Republican Party platform, as with John McCain's record, you are accepting a bunch of slogans and conventional wisdom instead of actually looking at the facts and analyzing them critically.
A year from now, or a year from January when the next President takes office?
When General Petraus goes to congress next time in the spring.
He's going to ask for another
Friedman, SCD. Like he does EVERY six months.
I still retain my stance as while there is a lot of bad shit going on, it is not the same old shit, and it is getting to the point where the Iraqi government wants to exert sovereignty and call the shots.
Throughout these abortions of battles against the militias, the Iraqi army is going to gain both a military tradition (that doesn't involve having their entire air force destroyed thrice in the last half century by their two western enemies), and a senior NCO corps from all the veterans. Only then can there be real discipline and pride in the ranks.
In other words, "The surge is working, we'll stand down as they stand up."
Fuck that. So we're making progress? That's swell. We've been making progress for five years now. (In fact, we even accomplished the mission in May of '03. Man that was sweet.) The "this is the crucial six months; we can start drawing our troops down after that" song and dance is wearing thin.
So what are you going to say when your deadline's up and Petraeus says we're making progress, we just need six more months?
And if you believe that we shouldn't listen to him when he says the same thing a year from now, well, why should we listen to him when he says it now?
