John McCain, Traitor

In the eyes of its diehards, the Republican Party will go a long way tomorrow toward nominating a candidate who has betrayed its principles.

On the far right's list of infamy, McCain is reviled for damaging free speech and the First Amendment for trying to curb the power of money in elections, harming free enterprise by advocating a patient's bill of rights and the importation of lower-priced socialized medications from Canada and, worst of all, refusing to crack down on illegal immigrants who might sneak across our unfenced borders for another 9/11 attack.

The tide of bile against John McCain is so high that right-wing realists are piling last-minute sandbags on the ideological dikes to avert a GOP Katrina.

In the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby argues that "the immaculate conservative leader for whom so many on the right yearn to vote is a fantasy. Conservatives who say that McCain is no Ronald Reagan are right, but Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan either. Neither is Mike Huckabee. And neither was the real--as opposed to the mythic--Ronald Reagan.

"The conservative case against McCain is clear enough...But this year, the conservative case for McCain is vastly more compelling."

The New York Times' new sage William Kristol urges far-right colleagues to overcome their "disgruntlement and dyspepsia" and not to "treat 2008 as a throwaway election."

Fellow senators, too, are having a hard time swallowing the idea of McCain as their standard bearer, the Washington Post reports, warning that "his tirades suggest a temperament unfit for the Oval Office."

McCain's offenses against collegiality, to an outside observer, seem motivated by outrage at blatant corruption, but we may not be attuned to the nuances of legislative free enterprise.

Tomorrow will be a test for all his detractors. Will they choose a chance to win in November with the treacherous McCain or go down in honor with malleable Mitt Romney?

The Panic of the Least Political President

In my lifetime of observing 12 American Presidents, none has been as politically incompetent--or to be more accurate, uninvolved in the process--as George W. Bush. He is highly partisan, but not political.

So it comes as no surprise that insiders are admitting the White House “is in panic mode” over defections of Senate Republicans from their four years of unwavering support for the President’s Iraq policy.

On CNN last night David Gergen, who worked in several Administrations, expressed bewilderment at Bush’s failure to engage directly with legislative leaders of his party, instead sending his National Security Adviser on a “scouting trip” rather than attempting personally to keep his troops from breaking ranks.

From the extreme of Lyndon Johnson, who twisted arms, to Dwight Eisenhower, who believed in “reasoning” with legislators, every President has worked hard as an advocate, cheer-leader and horse trader to get Congress to do what he wanted.

Bush seems to disdain all that. Perhaps his life experience explains why. Unlike others who had to strive and struggle to get there, Bush came to the White House after a lifetime of getting what he wanted through family connections.

In 2000, he was practically anointed as the Republican nominee by name recognition and massive early fund-raising that came with it. When John McCain became a potential road block after winning in New Hampshire, Rove and his gang of Bush family retainers blasted him out of the way.

Now, perhaps for the first time in his life, the scion of the Bush line is facing a challenge that hired hands can’t handle for him. Will he have the instincts and the guts to meet it? Or will he become the lamest Lame Duck of all time?

Republican Retreat From Iraq

As the tote board fills up with GOP diehards ready to pull out our troops, there should be satisfaction and relief for those who have opposed this insane war from the start. But there is only rage and disgust at what it has taken to get them there.

Sen. Pete Domenici now solemnly announces he has “carefully studied” the situation and decided to “support a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to coming home."

He joins Hagel, Lugar, Warner, Voinovich, Norm Coleman, Gordon Smith and Lamar Alexander in defecting from the Bush fiasco. Others will follow.

Domenici has been in the Senate 34 years, but his safe seat will be tested next year not only because of his unfailing loyalty to a failed policy but the testimony of ousted U. S. Attorney David Iglesias that Domenici pressured him to speed up prosecution of Democrats before last year’s election.

So it is clear that Domenici’s decision to stop sending young men and women to be killed in Iraq is based, not on seeing them as human beings to be saved, but on his narrow self-interest. If public opinion hadn’t turned against the war, he would still be for it.

What kind of people make life-and-death decisions solely on what’s in it for them? If Domenici thought the war was justified last week, last month, last year, what else but fear of losing his cushy job has changed his mind? What has he “carefully studied?” Where has he been?

Disgust is too mild a word for the feelings roused by watching these weasels crawl toward doing what’s right in the hope of saving their own skins. But let’s get on with it and stop the bloodshed.