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McCain's Flip-Flops

Puppycow

Penultimate Amazing
Puppycow
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John McCain voted against offshore oil drilling. Recently a poll came out showing that Americans now favor offshore oil drilling, and McCain changes his position to be in favor of it.

John McCain voted against making the Bush tax cuts permanent. He had a change of heart during the Republican primaries when it was politically convenient to change his mind and now he says he wants to make them permanent.

John McCain voted for amnesty for illegal immigrants, now he says he's against it.

I thought he was supposed to be the candidate of principle, not political expediency and finger-in-the-wind poll following?
 
Puppycow said:
John McCain voted against offshore oil drilling. Recently a poll came out showing that Americans now favor offshore oil drilling, and McCain changes his position to be in favor of it.

John McCain voted against making the Bush tax cuts permanent. He had a change of heart during the Republican primaries when it was politically convenient to change his mind and now he says he wants to make them permanent.

John McCain voted for amnesty for illegal immigrants, now he says he's against it.

I thought he was supposed to be the candidate of principle, not political expediency and finger-in-the-wind poll following?
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While I am a self-described liberal and almost certain to vote for Obama, I don't think we should judge too harshly because of a candidate's political history. After all, it is in fact the duty of a politician to represent the people who elected him, and if those people change their views, then wise politicians will also change their views. Also, it is true that situations change. Just as most Democrats voted to give the President authority to invade Iraq, it is not dishonorable for them to change that position based on new information. Certainly the American people changed their position almost 180 degrees.

Add to that the fact that McCain is so old that he remembers when the Rocky Mountains were the Pebbly Hills. For a guy who has been in politics that long, it is hardly surprising that a number of issues have come and gone in various incarnations. These issues are not cut-and-dried, but have tremendous potential for subtle differences. It's not just the big "sound bite" that describes a position. I can give you numerous examples. You can be "For gun control" in that you support background checks while simultaneously being "Against gun control" in that you don't want a handgun ban.

That being said, it is quite obvious that McCain is in major Pander Mode. He has alienated large portions of the Republican base and must woo them back if he wishes to have a chance. I doubt he will be able to do this in time, but his task is made easier by the fact that Americans have shorter memories than stoned Irish Setters.
 
Took a loan premised on him accepting public campaign financing; refused to take public financing.
 
I can here the sound of flip flops hitting the floor when I watch McCan. The problem that he has is his past "maverick" gimmick doesn't appeal to this core base. That unforunatley has led him to flip flop.
 
Tokorona said:
I was more thinking of his "I am against torture" then voting against the bill that would ban the CIA from torture.
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More along the lines that he didn't want the CIA being restricted to the Army field manual prescriptions for interrogation. Of course, liberal pundits read into this that McCain wanted the CIA to be able to torture people. McCain has responded that the CIA uses interrogation techniques besides what is in the army field manual but that are also not torture. The main difference is that when the Army takes a prisoner, they're after a different kind of information than when the CIA takes one. Therefore, the reasoning is that we should not restrict both organizations to the same techniques. This does not conflict with McCain's position against torture.
 
Tokorona said:
I was more thinking of his "I am against torture" then voting against the bill that would ban the CIA from torture.

That is, the only flipflop I'll see is one where your principles are compromised, not one where you just change your mind based on new information.
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McCain had good reasons for his vote:

Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top national security adviser, said McCain was concerned about the Senate legislation's requirement that the CIA abide by Army rules. "It's not a vote for torture," Scheunemann said. "This wasn't a vote on waterboarding. This was a vote on applying the standards of the field manual to CIA personnel."
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And:

A McCain Senate aide said that his vote does not mean the senator endorses any of these tactics. Instead, the aide said, there are noncoercive interrogation techniques not used by the Army that could be useful to the CIA. The aide declined to provide an example, but said it made sense for the CIA to use tactics that are not widely known through the field manual, which is a public document.
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And need I point out that at least McCain voted?

The two leading Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), have said waterboarding is clearly illegal and should be banned, but neither voted on the Senate legislation because they were campaigning elsewhere.
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McCain voted for the last farm bill that had ethanol subsidies. This time around with food prices at all time highs, he voted agaisnt the bill.

What a flip flipper. Oh wait, what do we call that when someone changes their mind after evidence shows their opinion is wrong?
 
I think it comes down to McCain's ability to defend his current position and explain the reasoning behind it. Certainly, the last thing we want is someone coming into the presidency with a fixed agenda, unable to adjust to new information or new conditions.

With bills running hundreds of pages and including thousands of unrelated line items, it is impossible to state based on any one vote whether someone is for or against any general policy. Someone may be for national health care but against a specific national health care proposal, etc.

If McCain came out tomorrow and stated that the Iraqi government was doing so much better at taking over control of the country that they no longer need so many US troops, and he wants to start bringing them home, I would be thrilled. Regardless of whether this would be considered a flip-flop or not.
 
NotJesus said:
Presumably, he also had good reasons in 2005 when he submitted an amendment to restrict all U.S. interrogators to the Army Field Manual.
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Got a source for that? In 2005, McCain got Bush to agree to a formal ban on torture by all US interrogators:

After resisting for months, President Bush caved in to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Thursday and said he would accept a formal ban on the cruel or inhumane treatment of detainees in U.S. custody anywhere in the world.
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http://articles.latimes.com/2005/dec/16/nation/na-torture16

This has nothing to do, however, with restricting interrogation techniques to the Army field manual.
 
Sefarst said:
Got a source for that?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/politics/14detain.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

Mr. McCain's measure, which the Senate has overwhelmingly approved, would require that only interrogation techniques authorized by the new Army field manual be used on prisoners held by the military...

On Capitol Hill, negotiations intensified Tuesday between Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, and his counterpart in the House, Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican. The two lawmakers are working with the White House and Mr. McCain to resolve differences on his provision, the last major issue holding up passage of the annual military budget and policy bill. Mr. Warner, who strongly supports the provision, expressed confidence that House and Senate negotiators could approve the conference report within 48 hours. It was unclear, however, how far the House was willing to go to back White House efforts to alter Mr. McCain's language. The speaker, J. Dennis Hastert met Tuesday with Vice President Dick Cheney but details of their talks could not be learned. Mr. Cheney strongly opposes Mr. McCain's measure and unsuccessfully sought to have the Central Intelligence Agency exempted from its restrictions.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91560330

In late 2005, McCain sponsored an amendment to limit interrogation techniques to those listed in the Army Field Manual, which excludes the use of torture. Vice President Dick Cheney vehemently opposed making the Army's rules apply to the CIA — a position that angered McCain.

"Why is it that some people feel that we should carve out an exemption for a branch of our government to practice cruel and inhumane treatment or even torture," McCain asked.

In the end, the senator agreed to limit the torture ban to the U.S. military.
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http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1729891,00.html

My understanding is that only an early draft of the bill contained wording to the effect of applying the Army Field Manual techniques to "all people in US custody" which would have applied to the CIA. According to TIME, this wording was dropped in later drafts after McCain consulted with other Senators and staffers.

Your source:
"Why is it that some people feel that we should carve out an exemption for a branch of our government to practice cruel and inhumane treatment or even torture," McCain asked.

In the end, the senator agreed to limit the torture ban to the U.S. military.
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(bolding mine)
The quote demonstrates that McCain's goal was to ban the use of "cruel and inhumane treatment or even torture" on people the US has detained. He achieved this goal with his 2005 bill.

Not a flip flop.

ETA: How do I get the site to stop highlighting the word "ban"?
 
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Sefarst said:
The quote demonstrates that McCain's goal was to ban the use of "cruel and inhumane treatment or even torture" on people the US has detained. He achieved this goal with his 2005 bill.
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Provided said people aren't unfortunate enough to be detained by the CIA.

Sefarst said:
Not a flip flop.
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Well, there's a change of position there. First he wanted to include the CIA. Now he doesn't. But to make you happy, we won't call it a flip flop. We'll just call it caving in to Dick Cheney.
 
That bill was crap on toast. Instead of making a blacklist it made a whitelist. I think they _wanted_ it to be vetoed so they could use it for political purposes.

I am getting tired of these sacrificial lamb bills to be honest that are just there to paint the other side the way you want. Reid and Pelosi were supposed to change the corrupt and ineffective Delay-GOP congress.

To be honest, they are simply worse. Less corrupt but more incompetent (and I didn't think that was possible after the Terry Schiavo intervention).
 
Not to change topics but I would just like to mention that since most people think the country is headed in the wrong direction shouldn't they be blaming the Democrats instead of continuing to oust Republicans? They did break almost every "promise" they made last election. This is nothing new of course but it's almost legendary in the amount of promises they made and didn't keep or just forgot about entirely.
 
Policenaut said:
Not to change topics but I would just like to mention that since most people think the country is headed in the wrong direction shouldn't they be blaming the Democrats instead of continuing to oust Republicans? They did break almost every "promise" they made last election. This is nothing new of course but it's almost legendary in the amount of promises they made and didn't keep or just forgot about entirely.
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LOL. First we have a post by Cornplinx decrying bills with no chance of enactment, submitting for political purposes, and now we have Policenaut decrying the failure of the Democratically controlled congress to fulfill their promises.

Last I saw, the Democrats did not have veto-proof majorities in either the house or the senate, and they do not have the votes in the Senate to end a GOP filibuster. This limits their ability to enact their agenda. The answer is to elect more Democrats, not less. Then you can hold them accountable for what they do or don't accomplish.
 
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