McCAIN STUMBLES ALL OVER HIMSELF AND CHARLIE RANGEL HAS A LITTLE SURPRISE FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE WARS: THEIR OWN CHILDREN CAN GO FIGHT THEM

Public opinion surveys always show McCain with a lot of public approval. He has a great p.r. staff. The media always calls him a moderate, even though on virtually everything but torture he's an extreme right wing nut-- and even on torture, he backed down pretty fast when Rove and Cheney yelled "Boo!" And when's the last time the media mentioned The Keating 5 when talking about McCain's quest for the presidency?

Do you think the mass media will point out how his views are violently at odds with the wishes of most Americans on a number of critical issues? Just today, for example, McCain vowed that if he were elected president he would immediately work to overturn Roe vs Wade. Does that make him a flip-glopper? A liar? A panderer? An extremist? Patently unqualified to lead this country? All of the above?

McCain's media strategy has been to try to pass him off as a "straight talker" and not just another politico who will tell any audience what they want to hear in return for their support, and yet... at heart, that's exactly what he is. He's crass; he's craven; he's completely untrustworthy. In 1999 when he was trying to portray himself as a moderate he took up the same position as President Clinton, that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. "I'd love to see a point where it is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations." But this morning, on ABC, when the goal is to appeal to the GOP base, the far right kooks who vote in the Republican primaries, he had quite something else entirely to say:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask one question about abortion. Then I want to turn to Iraq. You're for a constitutional amendment banning abortion, with some exceptions for life and rape and incest.

MCCAIN: Rape, incest and the life of the mother. Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So is President Bush, yet that hasn't advanced in the six years he’s been in office. What are you going to do to advance a constitutional amendment that President Bush hasn't done?

MCCAIN: I don't think a constitutional amendment is probably going to take place, but I do believe that it's very likely or possible that the Supreme Court should — could overturn Roe v. Wade, which would then return these decisions to the states, which I support.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And you'd be for that?

MCCAIN: Yes, because I'm a federalist. Just as I believe that the issue of gay marriage should be decided by the states, so do I believe that we would be better off by having Roe v. Wade return to the states. And I don't believe the Supreme Court should be legislating in the way that they did on Roe v. Wade.

Not your issue? How about the Bush war against Iraq? Even with a warmonger like Henry Kissinger finally admitting that a military victory is impossible and admitting that Iraq isn't going to accept an American form of government, especially not one imposed on them, McCain is positively salivating at the prospect of sending more young Americans into the meatgrinder of the Iraqi Civil War. Not many Americans support this point of view (just Lieberman as far as I can see).

"Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors-- including Iran-- progress is to be made in the region." Interviewed by the BBC, Kissinger responded to a question about winning in Iraq in a way very different from Republican or McCain dogma:

If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible.

McCain is still yelling about sending more troops and babbling the same Rove-invented nonsense about fighting them there or fighting them down at the WalMart. "We leave this place, chaos in the region, and they'll follow us home. So there's a great deal more at stake here in this conflict, in my view, a lot more." Meanwhile, the only fighting we did at the WalMart with VietNam after we gave up on that catastrophic miscalculation was over shelf space.

McCain's base of support, low-information suburban "independents," (or, more accurately, Decline-to-state's) are about to get a big wake-up call if they think the war can just go blithely forward and be fought by other people's children. You remember all that hubbub about young Republicans-- reminiscent of a "too busy" young Dick Cheney-- who were all for the war but couldn't quite get themselves over to Iraq? Well Charlie Rangel has an idea about making fighting something that isn't only for the sons and daughters of poor Americans. It's called a draft; and I expect that would end the war-- and McCain's chances to be elected to anything.