RSS Feed MenuJohn McCain took a lot of criticism last year from conservatives who thought he wasn’t sufficiently conservative on questions of the judiciary and the Constitution – this despite a great speech on judges and the rule of law (which annoyed a lot of the right people to annoy) and one on property rights and his repeated commitment to appoint “clones” of Justices Roberts and Alito.
Granted, he may not have been the most “conservative” candidate in the race, whatever that means, despite his consistent quarter-century pro-life voting record, his strong belief in federalism, and his obsession with controlling Federal spending, to say nothing of his standing virtually alone in calling for the surge and victory in Iraq. But today, John McCain is due more than a few apologies from conservatives who didn’t think he met their litmus tests.
Yesterday, when the Senate was discussing the bill that would give voting rights in the House to the District of Columbia (and add an additional seat for Utah), Senator McCain tried to stop debate by calling for a constitutional point of order to consider the profound constitutional issues at stake in the bill. Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that only States may have representatives in Congress. For the record, he was debating in strong yet respectful terms his close friend and supporter, Senator Joe Lieberman – exactly the kind of interaction the Framers intended when they established the Senate. (McCain’s motion unfortunately lost, 62-36.)
If one favors voting rights for the District, the proper recourse is a Constitutional amendment, such as Congress itself proposed in 1978. But only 16 of the 38 States necessary chose to ratify it. So now Congress is trying a different way, albeit one that would only affect the House and not the Senate.
And what do you know, John McCain has read his Constitution.
Yes, John McCain is a conservative and a constitutionalist. He meant what he said in the campaign last year.
Apologies now being accepted.
Churl // Feb 26, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Too bad he was politically dead before he got religion.
Chekote // Feb 27, 2009 at 7:37 am
I will never apologize to McCain. Why? He ran the worse campaign in recent political history.
ireign // Feb 27, 2009 at 8:52 am
I supported McCain. But McCain is not a lawyer and is not particularly well versed in constitutional law. We have no idea what type of judges he would have appointed. Nixon, Ford, Reagan, HW Bush, and W all made similar promises. We now have four liberal justices even though just two of the appointments were made by Democrats.
Thus, no apology is needed as no one has any clue who he would have appointed. John Fund claimed and McCain denied that he privately told people that he would not have appointed someone like Alito.
Everything, is just speculation.
sinz54 // Feb 27, 2009 at 10:50 am
Chekote: No other Republican could have beaten Obama either. The collapse of the financial sector (which soon started taking the entire U.S. economy down with it) caused an enormous wave of anger toward the GOP, because the incumbent President was a Republican. The GOP’s approval rating remains in the cellar to this day. Arguing about the skills of the campaigner are useless, when the campaign was lost right then and there. There was simply no way to square the circle of running for President while simultaneously running away from his party’s standard bearer, whom all major candidates save Ron Paul had supported for years. It’s the same trap that sank Hubert Humphrey in 1968–yet he ran the best campaign possible under the circumstances. Not since 1876 has a highly unpopular President been succeeded to the White House by someone from his own party (and the election results of 1876 were dubious at best too).
sinz54 // Feb 27, 2009 at 10:56 am
The religious Right will never forgive McCain for the McCain-Feingold bill, because that law restricted their ability to run negative attack ads against Dem candidates in the closing weeks of the campaign. But I suggest that Obama’s 2008 campaign has made this issue moot. Obama has demonstrated a new thing: How to raise enormous sums of campaign cash (wiping out the GOP’s traditional advantage) by grass-roots viral campaigning over the Internet. This negates the traditional church-based networking of the evangelicals. Conservatives of all stripes need to learn how to emulate Obama’s tactics and start coast-to-coast viral campaigning over the Internet too.
John Murdock // Feb 27, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Great piece. And kudos to Democrat Robert Byrd for taking the Constitution seriously as well. It is a shame that more of those who swear to protect our national charter obviously do not read it. Providing representation in the House for DC (and perhaps for the Pacific territories and Puerto Rico/Virgin Islands) seems in keeping with the idea of a legislative body close to the people. The Senate is properly for the States. The Constitution is for all of us, but we all need to be for it. This end run is shameful. Glad to see leaders like McCain standing up.
Bulldoglover100 // Feb 27, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Are you freaking nuts? One word for McCain. SELL OUT. He took Sarah Palin and he went down hill from there. We lost Independents and millions of Republicans with that stupid stunt and so no I don’t think you will see anyone apologizing to John McCain.
ireign // Feb 27, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Bulldoglover100-If McCain had picked someone conventional for VP he would have lost as well. His campaign took a calculated risk because they figured the only way they were going to win was to get suburban soccer moms and Reagan Democrats who supported Hillary.
Sinz54, your analysis is mostly right. But one should not overlook how hypocritical it is that Democrats were only into public financing when they were behind in fundraising. Now that Democrats are outraising Republicans, the issue is never brought up.
sinz54 // Mar 1, 2009 at 9:17 am
ireign: You’re “mostly right” too. But McCain really did have a serious shot at winning over those disappointed soccer moms who had supported Hillary. Sarah Palin was drawing large crowds all the way to Election Day–and for a couple of weeks after the GOP convention, McCain-Palin were ahead of Obama in the polls (and the Dems were getting very nervous). But then the economy fell off a cliff, and she had nothing to say about it, except vague generalities that were just as vague as Obama’s “hope and change” pap. And those suburban soccer moms were suddenly facing bankruptcy on their mortgages and the melting away of their retirement nest eggs–and they wanted to hear specific solutions. If Sarah Palin had displayed a command of economic issues equal to Mitt Romney’s, the final election results would have been a lot closer.
gerrysh // Mar 1, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Right, and that’s why McCain denounced the EPA, HHS, Miseducation Department, and every other unconstitutional government entity.