Here’s an excerpt from a McCain release that illustrates what we’re seeing more and more, which is the "presumptive" nominee starting the general election campaign:
The Washington Post this week clearly laid out one of the key differences at stake in the coming general election. The Post reported, "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure more than $340 million worth of home-state projects in last year’s spending bills, placing her among the top 10 Senate recipients of what are commonly known as earmarks, according to a new study by a nonpartisan budget watchdog group." Barack Obama is no better; he requested and received over $91 million of our hard-earned tax dollars for his own special interests and earmarks.
What’s worse is that Senator Obama, who claims to be a candidate of "change," has refused to disclose the earmarks he requested prior to last year, when he started running for president. Washington needs change, but we will ever see it from someone who is part of the business as usual crowd in the Senate. How many earmarks did John McCain request last year? Zero.
This is a good place for him to start, since fighting pork gets him in good with those crybabies in his base we keep hearing about, and plays well with independents. Heck, even Speaker Pelosi has teamed up with Jim DeMint to fight earmarks.
One quibble, though: It makes no logical sense to say, "Barack Obama is no better," when in the same sentence you quantify the degree to which he was at least less bad: He sought $91 million worth of pork to Sen. Clinton’s $340 million. Assuming, of course, those numbers are accurate.
Huck Finn had a good rule of them that should be applied to political rhetoric: "Overreaching don’t pay."
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$340 million sounds like a lot of money but it only about 1/100 of 1 percent of the $3 trillion annual federal budget. Senator McCain is trying to change the subject by focusing on a somewhat small problem, earmarks, that hardly make a dent in the overall federal budget deficit.
Funny how times have changed. Strom Thurmond was regarded as a hero by those on the right for all the goodies he was able to bring into South Carolina. I don’t know whether they were called earmarks in those days but the concept was the same: bring goodies back to the constituents at home and ignore where the money came from to finance the pork.
Senator McCain is trying to change the subject by focusing on a somewhat small problem, earmarks, that hardly make a dent in the overall federal budget deficit.* Bud
You got that right! Using new age republican math, Senator McCain’s 100 year war in Iraq comes out to a modest earmark of 100 trillion federal reserve notes…..
You lefties can’t make up your mind about anything and that is why you are such misarable people. You should take a cue from Governor Huckabee when he says he doesn’t have to worry about what he believes in when he wakes up every morning.
You tell us every day that the world is going to be destroyed by global warming if we don’t subject ourselves to a world governing body so why are you worried about a 100 year war? That red herring is really starting to smell.
Is he looking towards November, or just getting into bed with the Club for Growth?
McCain says no new taxes
McCain outlines voucher program and how to pay for it
Is he looking towards November, or just getting into bed with the Club for Growth?
McCain says no new taxes
McCain outlines voucher program and how to pay for it
No new taxes and school vouchers? Sounds like Brad’s kind of guy! Oh, wait, issues don’t matter when you’re endorsing a hero.
And he made the voucher pitch on the Yorktown at Patriots Point… them’s fighting words, ain’t they, Brad?
Maybe being endorsed by other Republicans who ended their careers when they betrayed the base has made McCain realize he needs to get out of the left lane, and head right to center.
McCain’s my favorite remaining candidate, Brad, but you’re patting him on the back for doing exactly what Mark Sanford did when he was in Washington, when if you knew what kind of toilet paper is in supply at the governor’s mansion, you’d criticize Gov. Sanford for that, too.
After you make up your mind about a person, everything they do is either wrong or right. If McCain quoted Hitler, you’d praise him for it. If Sanford quoted Mother Teresa, you’d diss him.
You manipulate the facts to suit your prejudices. That’s the WORST kind of partisanship.
You manipulate the facts to suit your prejudices. That’s the WORST kind of partisanship.
-weldon VII
Thank you Weldon. That’s what I’ve been saying for months about Brad. He is indeed highly partisan but just won’t admit it.
So it shows from both sides, Bud.
I guess that means it’s time to party. 🙂
And, oh, Wally, thanks so much for the link to the New York Times story on McCain backing vouchers. Thanks to your link, I noticed a link to a Times story about the proper use of a semicolon on a subway. It was actually the most viewed story on the traditional list at the right.
I’m heartened when I discover that someone somewhere knows how to use a semicolon, and even moreso for a government employee, in these troubled times when the king’s English is deteriorating faster than a subway can travel.
OK, bud, put up or shut up time: So which party is it? I’ve made it absolutely clear to you over and over that when I use the term “partisan,” I don’t use it in the sense of “having an opinion about an issue” — which seems to be your favored sense. I’ve made it clear that I am speaking of slavish identification with a political party (or the attendant disease of unvarying devotion to the “left” or “right,” which increasing means the same thing in this country).
“Partisan,” as it is used on this blog and as it is used about 99 percent of the time in this country, refers to sticking up for your party — and we talking Democrats or Republicans here, since the Libertarians and others aren’t really a factor — at all times, and always denigrating people of the “opposite” party. It means surrendering your ability to think to party platforms. It means thinking it really MATTERS whether someone is a Democrat or a Republican.
So, bud — what’s my party? Democratic? Republican? What’s my ideology: Left? Right?
Either state it, and support it, and let the other readers judge your thinking on the matter, or drop this business of taking a relatively esoteric sense of the word and using it for no other purpose whatsoever than to insult me. You know that’s what you’re doing, and there’s no other possible reason to do it than to have that effect. You know that partisanship is loathsome to me, and unless you have a profound reading comprehension problem you know WHY. I’m pretty sure you’ve never met anyone who has explained his aversion to partisanship more than I have. This means what you are doing is saying, “What does Brad despise most?” and deciding to call me that, which is a form or argument on the intellectual level of “I know you are, but what am I?”
You know that ad hominem attacks are verboten on this blog. You know that in particular, I don’t allow it from anonymous commenters. I have bent way the hell over backward for you on both points, mainly because I am the object rather than someone out there.
But I’ve had enough of it. Either support your assertion of my oh-so-obvious hypocrisy — and that means showing that I am precisely the sort of partisan that I myself condemn, in the common sense in which I use the term — or cut it out. Now.
Dang, I was just agreeing with Weldon, in a rare moment when Left and Right come together in a bi-partisan way.