Is Anyone Else REALLY Uncomfortable With McCain??

Conservative Columnist George Will has never been easy with the Iraq war. He's not a neo-con (strictly a foreign policy term). It's why he hasn't had much sway with the administration since 9/11. That may also be part of why he isn't enamored with McCain's run for the presidency. Will realizes he's not "on the same page" with many Republicans on the war, but on most other issues I rely on his depth and insight. He doesn't seem fond of McCain, and for many reasons, I agree.

One reason I am uncomfortable with McCain is found in the word often associated with him, that being "Maverick." Are we so uncomfortable with what we've so strongly believed for thirty-five years that we now need a maverick to tell us where we've been wrong? I for one don't believe the Republicans are the ones who need it. If the nation is going to move toward bigger and more expensive and more controlling and intrusive, I can't for the life of me think of an agreeable way for a REPUBLICAN to get us there. That's not a maverick, that's a Democrat!!

If you are unfortunate enough to have a brain hard-wired for political control, the prize of Wash, DC is simply to big to concern yourself with niceties like ethics, or truth. The ones in control define these things for the "masses," and us common folk will just follow. McCain insists that he'll never lie to us, I say, that in itself IS at least a stretch!

Well, now that we have this huge monstrous behemoth of a centralized government, how comfortable are we with a "Maverick?" When it comes to his promises for the selection of a SC nominee, can we trust him to pick the sort he promises? ESPECIALLY since the sort he promises would probably rule against McCain's most controversial legislation?

And why don't Democrat "mavericks" ever run for president? Does anyone think the media would assign one any credibility at all?

Enough of my rant, here's some of Will's, from 1/20 column "Waiting for Straight Talk "

Republicans are supposed to eschew demagogic aspersions concerning complicated economic matters. But applause greets faux "straight talk" that brands as "bad" the industry responsible for the facts that polio is no longer a scourge, that childhood leukemia is no longer a death sentence, that depression and other mental illnesses are treatable diseases, that the rate of heart attacks and heart failures has been cut by more than half in 50 years.

When McCain and Joe Lieberman introduced legislation empowering Congress to comprehensively regulate U.S. industries' emissions of greenhouse gases in order to "prevent catastrophic global warming," they co-authored an op-ed column that radiated McCainian intolerance of disagreement. It said that a U.N. panel's report "puts the final nail in denial's coffin about the problem of global warming." Concerning the question of whether human activity is causing catastrophic warming, they said, "the debate has ended."

Interesting, is it not, that no one considers it necessary to insist that "the debate has ended" about whether the Earth is round. People only insist that a debate stop when they are afraid of what might be learned if it continues.