Legal Commentary

Friday McBush Bashing (Netroots Edition)

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

I think McCain’s ‘tell’ — the sign he is prevaricating — is when he blinks a lot. Just watch any video on YouTube and judge for yourself. (Hmm. Turns out I’m not the only one to notice this. See, for example, Matthew Yglesias.)

This hypothesis should be easy to test: Kos, there are just so many falsehoods to pick from.

OK, onwards with this weeks ridiculously long list of quality McCain bashing:

• Carpetbagger, McCain, his personal life, and statements ‘that conflict with the public record’
• Think Progress, After Voting Against Equal Pay Legislation, McCain Claims He’s ‘Committed To Equal Pay For Equal Work’
• Another issue that could hurt McCain with women: apparently, polling shows John McCain’s votes against insurance coverage for birth control have tremendous resonance with women, including independents and Republicans. Thus, this ad from Planned Parenthood:
  
  
• Carpetbagger, McCain unsure of ‘the progress,’ ‘the nature,’ and ‘the significance’ of the Iranian threat
• Kos, McCain camp flashing the greenbacks
• TaxProf Blog, Why Hasn’t McCain Reported His Gambling Gains and Losses on His Tax Returns?
• Robert Gordon and James Kvaal, The New Republic, McContradiction
• Kos, The McMyth; similarly, Crooks & Liars, McCain, his personal life, and statements ‘that conflict with the public record’
• Delong, McCain: Phil Gramm and Fred Malek
• Crooks & Liars, McCain Campaign (NOT Secret Service) Had “Bush=McCain” Protestor Removed
• NY Times, Editorial, There He Goes Again (“Mr. McCain and his advisers must know that his numbers do not add up. But adding up is not their point. Their point is to perpetuate the fantasy that Americans can have ever bigger tax cuts and a balanced federal budget. They cannot.”)
• Dale Carpenter of the Volokh Conspiracy says McCain’s latest stance on adoption by gay parents is Thoughtless. Worse than that, it has created, McCain’s Perez Hilton Problem (per HuffPo)
• Crooks & Liars, Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) goes blank trying to find differences between McCain and Bush’s economic policies.
• HuffPo, McCain Aide Calls For Fully Funded No Child Left Behind, Which McCain Voted Against
• Crooks & Liars, Introducing Wrong-Way McCain
• Kos, John McCain’s Immigration Flip-Flop
• Carpetbagger, So much for the ‘respectful campaign’ (“McCain’s campaign has said Obama should not be “taken at his word,” and his “word cannot be trusted.” McCain was asked directly whether he questioned Obama’s patriotism, and McCain wouldn’t give a straight answer. Today, it seems as if the McCain campaign has kicked things up a notch, arguing that Obama and Democrats want to see the U.S. fail in Iraq in order to benefit politically.”) Cf. Talking Points Memo, McCain Camp: Obama Wants U.S. to Lose in Iraq
• Carpetbagger, Note to McCain: Czechoslovakia doesn’t exist anymore
• McCain Starts Stomping in Home State — because polls show he can’t count on carrying Arizona!
• MyDD, John McCain’s DREAM Act Flip: first he was for it, then he was against it, now he’s for it again — it depends on the audience? See also Democrats.org, McCain versus McCain on the DREAM Act and Carpetbagger, Will the ‘Dream Act’ be a nightmare for McCain?
• Firedoglake, Bush & McCain On The Economy, Gas Prices: Psychic Friends
• Another sure-fire vote getter with women: Crooks & Liars, Did you hear John McCain’s Woman/Rape/Gorilla Joke? & ThinkProgress,Flashback: McCain joked about how much women love to be raped. OK, it was in 1986 — but didn’t you know better than that in 1986? And, in Beaten Senseless, Atrios notes just how horrible it all is:

  The thing about the McCain rape joke is that it isn’t just horrible because it’s a a joke about a woman liking rape, it’s about a woman who is explicitly beaten senseless until she becomes unconscious and raped and she enjoyed the experience.

• Does John McCain’s sick sense of humor matter?
• While we’re doing ancient history, how about Crooks & Liars, Flashback: McCain Admits He’s Dumber Than Bush? The serious point here isn’t that McCain was a feckless privileged youth, but rather than all these years later he still likes to glory in his anti-intellectualism. Wouldn’t it be nice to have another President who thought brains (and facts!) were a good thing?
• Talking Points Memo, McCain Now Playing Catch-Up On Afghanistan
• Carpetbagger, McCain still sees success in ’surge’
• Mark Kleiman, “McCain says: “Slash Social Security benefits”
• He may think Social Security is “a disgrace”. He may be married to a multi-millionaire, but John McCain, 72, is receiving Social Security benefits
• Mark Kleiman again, Al Hunt hammers McCain
• Huffpo, Reporters Spar With McCain Press Aides Nicolle Wallace, Brooke Buchanan (VIDEO). Now, this is a pretty trivial event, except for two things: first, the journalists who got mad about the McCain campaign’s attempt to totally control them were from a FOX affiliate—if even FOX is getting bolshie with a Republican, well, you’re doing something odd. Second, these guys were local, experienced, journalists. What odds will you give that the national guys are tamer poodles?
• Crooks & Liars has an example of the MSM doing its job: ABC reports Absentee Senator: McCain Attended ZERO Afghanistan Hearings Over Past 2 Years
• And finally, for laughs, Lee Stranahan, Awakening Your Inner Elephant:
  

Full post as published by Discourse.net on July 18, 2008 (boomark / email).