Ryan ChartrandI am writing in response to the “United we vote” column by Christina Chiappe that was published on May 28.
McCain deserves our respect as a veteran and ex-POW. However, combat experience is not always indicative of a person’s honesty or integrity. The Vietnam veterans who organized the political group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth mocked John Kerry’s three purple hearts when the truth of their allegations was anything but established. To his credit, McCain publicly condemned the ads as dishonest.
During his most recent presidential campaign, McCain appears to have reevaluated his stance on a number of key issues in an attempt to appeal to a more conservative base. For example, he spoke of his opposition to a bill which would expand veterans’ benefits in a speech on Memorial Day. (The bill passed in Congress by a veto-proof margin despite the outspoken objections of McCain and a veto threat from the president.) More disturbing is McCain’s recent vote to quash a bill that would have restricted the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques.
As for McCain’s economic prowess, his own words speak volumes. He was quoted by the Wall Street Journal in 2005 saying, “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.” He later denied making these comments in the 2008 MSNBC Boca Raton Republican debate, claiming to be “well-versed in economics.”
McCain’s newfound support for extending the Bush tax cuts is a telling example of his opportunistic values. In a May 2001 floor statement he declared that he could not “in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle class Americans who most need tax relief.” He now claims that he initially opposed the tax cuts because they were not offset by spending cuts – a very different explanation from the one he gave seven years ago.
Chiappe argues that McCain is the “only uniting candidate in this election.” As proof, she cites polls from Ohio and Florida which purport to reveal that only half of Clinton supporters would vote for Obama over McCain. This statistic should be no surprise as it relates to Florida, considering the number of Floridians that were disenfranchised in its Democratic primary.
What I find more interesting is that Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul have continued to reap a significant percentage of votes (a combined 20 percent on average) in Republican primaries after McCain was crowned the presumptive Republican nominee.
The McCain of today is little more than a carbon copy of President Bush. As further evidence of how McCain’s values have changed over the years, consider that CQ gave him a 67 percent “party unity” voting score in 2001, yet last year he supported Bush’s position on legislation 95 percent of the time. His unrelenting support for an unpopular war that cannot be won and lockstep with President Bush on the most important issues facing this country are enough to make any Democrat cringe.
Jason Boyle is a computer science sophomore and a guest columnist for the Mustang Daily.