A Stitch in Haste

My friends, it’s time for some more straight talk about the presumptive GOP nominee:

ITEM: Apparently when McCain pledges “straight talk,” he means “straight” as in heterosexual –

Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said in an interview with The New York Times that was published Sunday that he opposed allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. “I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no, I don’t believe in gay adoption,” he said.

Now, agree or disagree with the thesis (actually, “disagree” is the only permissible option), one must admit that McCain’s statement seems to qualify as “straight” (i.e., honest and unambiguous) talk. Gay adoption? There should be no nothing never. Put a period on it and move on. A clunkhead view, no doubt, but an honest one.

Or not:

As several gay rights groups criticized Senator John McCain for saying he opposed gay adoption, the McCain campaign issued a clarification on Tuesday saying that he believed the issue should be decided by the states, and that such adoptions should not be subject to a federal ban.
…
“John McCain could have been clearer in the interview in stating that his position on gay adoption is that it is a state issue, just as he made it clear in the interview that marriage is a state issue,” Tucker Bounds, a campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “He was not endorsing any federal legislation.”

“Could have been clearer”? Mr. Straight Talk? Somehow I doubt that. The words “states” and “federal” were nowhere to be seen in the original quote. All he said was a thoroughly unambiguous, “I don’t believe in gay adoption.” That was of course the “straight talk” and not the utterly mockworthy post facto spin afterward.

As I have chronicled in the past, McCain’s “leave it to states” gobbledygook is simply a convenient way to wiggle off the hook and pander to both the far right and not-so-far right factions of the Republican Party.

The real “straight talk” is this: Not only is John McCain a rabid anti-gay bigot, he is the most dishonorable kind of rabid anti-gay bigot — one who cowers meekly behind the faux claim of “federalism” and “states’ powers.” Pathetic.

ITEM: Speaking of the far right faction of the Republican Party — they’re not buying it.

In the ongoing AP-Yahoo News Poll, only 10 percent of white evangelical Christians say they are excited by this election, compared with 20 percent of Americans overall. A third of these evangelicals said they were interested in the election, but half said they were frustrated by it.

Nevertheless, they support McCain over Obama by 62 percent to 18 percent. Although the AP-Yahoo News Poll is of all adults, not the smaller, more energized group of likely voters, McCain’s figures lag behind Bush’s showing among white evangelical Christian voters in the 2004 election, when exit polls indicated 78 percent supported him.
…
McCain has work to do among religious conservatives, says Don Kass, a Republican activist in nearby Plymouth County [Iowa]. “He needs to work quite a bit harder than he has to get those folks,” said Kass. “And I say those folks because I’m one of them. He needs to give them something that motivates them to get to the polls.”

I’ve joked in the past that the red state rednecks would eventually seek to repeal all those state constitution bigot amendments so they could then re-introduce them in subsequent elections. In any case, this worse-than-tepid not-quite-enthusiasm of Evangelicals toward McCain may actually work against my long-standing assertion that McCain should pick Huckabee as his running mate. I’m starting to wonder whether it may be too late for that, and that McCain may instead write off the theocrat vote altogether and instead try a regional play, or that he may choose a woman to try to appeal to disenchanted femi-racist Clinton supporters. (I still simply cannot see Romney as the pick.) In any event, it’s quite delicious to see the radical Evangelicals so frustrated. Quite delicious indeed.

ITEM: Speaking of the not-so-far right faction of the Republican Party — they’re not buying it either.

Mr. McCain is a convenient convert to the cause of sound judicial appointments. He has never paid much attention to judicial philosophy, backing both Clinton Supreme Court nominees — Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He also participated in the so-called “Gang of 14,” which favored centrist over conservative nominees as part of a compromise between President George W. Bush and Senate Democrats.
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But even if a President McCain were to influence the court, it would not likely be in a genuinely conservative direction. His jurisprudence is not conservative.

Can you guess who wrote that? If not, then what does it say about the author, let alone about McCain?

For the record, Barr’s editorial is not only flagrantly self-serving but also mind-bogglingly stupid, not only for its anti-libertarian jurisprudential posture (Barr: “Judge-made rights are wrong because there is no constitutional warrant behind them.” Oh really? Whose party’s nominee is this again?), but also for its sheer political obliviousness: A 768-word op-ed devoted exclusively to the topic of “McCain and judicial appointments” and nowhere, not once, do the words “Roe,” “Wade” or “abortion” appear? Is he serious?

In any case, the anticipation (either eager or dreaded) of a shift in the Supreme Court’s makeup is, I would venture, a far better issue for Obama than for McCain. That much is, I think, true. But for Barr to posit that conservatives will or should punish McCain for his “weakness” on judicial appointments, when the alternative is two or three nominations by President Obama, is ridiculous. They may punish him for other things, but they will not reflexively bite their pro-life nose to spite their anti-McCain face. McCain would be wise, given how little political capital he has on Iraq and the economy, to play the “strict constructionist judge” card/canard as much as he can get away with.

ITEM: McCain, who recently called Social Security a “disgrace” (true, but not for the reasons McCain gave) has admitted that he himself receives Social Security benefits. That in and of itself is not disturbing — he certainly is old enough. But the irony is that one of the true “disgraces” of the scheme is that a taxpayer who is eligible to receive benefits at age 62 or 65 but who continues working is penalized via a reduction in her benefits until age 70 (McCain is 71). This penalty, which punishes being productive, has no moral basis — a lifelong taxpayer has either earned the benefits or she has not. Whether she chooses to work rather than sit at a slot machine all day is totally irrelevant.