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By Weekly Archive On Feb 20, 2008

To
all my friends, Democrats and Independents, who have told me they’d
consider voting for John McCain in November, I have only two words.
PLEASE DON’T.

For
the sake of God, country and Mother Theresa, wise up.

Now
that it’s clear he’s going to be the Republican nominee for
president, it’s time to end our love affair with John McCain.

Don’t
feel badly if you were once a "McCainiac." So was I. We all
fell in love with the maverick McCain back in 2000, when he beat the
pants off George Bush in New Hampshire. But the McCain of 2000 is not
the same McCain we see today. That McCain doesn’t exist anymore.

Yes,
McCain’s a likable guy. He’s still an American hero. No one can ever
take that away from him. He still has a refreshing, self-deprecating
sense of humor. And he was once willing to tell leaders of his own
party to go pound sand. But, unfortunately, in order to secure his
party’s nomination, McCain tossed his independence out the window.
He’s no longer a maverick. Before our very eyes, the once-moderate
McCain has morphed into an extreme right-winger.

McCain’s
changed his tune on so many issues, he should change the name of his
bus from The Straight Talk Express to the Double-Talk Express.
There’s not one major issue the new McCain has not been on both sides
of.

In
2001 and again in 2003, he voted against the Bush tax cuts, saying at
the time: "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in
which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at
the expense of middle-class Americans who most need tax relief."
Today, he’s the biggest champion of making the Bush tax cuts
permanent. He once condemned religious conservatives like Jerry
Falwell and James Dobson as "agents of intolerance." Today,
he’s sucking up to them. On Jan. 9, 2000, he called the Confederate
flag "a symbol of racism and slavery." Three days later, he
insisted: "Personally, I see the flag as a symbol of heritage."
Today, he says he’ll leave it up to states to decide what to do about
flying the Confederate flag.

Even
on his signature issues, John McCain’s all over the place. He angered
conservatives by standing with President Bush on comprehensive
immigration reform. Today, he says, as president, he wouldn’t even
sign the immigration bill he sponsored. Same on campaign reform. In
2004, he denounced the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for the lies
they broadcast about John Kerry’s record in Vietnam. Running for
president in 2008, McCain, as first reported by The Nation magazine,
has accepted over $60,000 in campaign contributions from the same
Swift Boat liars. This week, the anti-torture McCain even voted to
allow the continued use of waterboarding.

But
nowhere is McCain’s change-with-the-wind politics more apparent than
in his approach to the war in Iraq. In January 2007, he blasted those
who led the American people to believe the war would be "some
kind of a walk at the beach." Yet during the buildup to war,
McCain himself told Larry King: "I believe that we can win an
overwhelming victory in a very short time." Now, running for
president, McCain is the chief cheerleader for the war, asserting
it’s OK with him if American troops remain in Iraq for 100 years.

McCain
is equally hawkish on Iran, rejecting direct talks with Iranian
leaders and holding out war with Iran as a real option. "There
is only one scenario worse than military action in Iran and that is a
nuclear-armed Iran," says McCain — which, of course, is the
same policy toward Iran advocated by George W. Bush.

Indeed,
that’s what’s so surprising about the new McCain: He’s so much like
the old Bush. They were once bitter enemies. Today, it’s virtually
impossible to tell them apart. Bush praises McCain as a true
conservative, while McCain vows to continue Bush’s economic and
foreign policies and appoint Supreme Court justices like John Roberts
and Samuel Alito. McCain even gushes over the man who engineered
Bush’s ugly attacks against him in South Carolina in 2000, praising
Karl Rove as "one of the smart, great political minds in
American politics."

Don’t
be fooled. Vote for John McCain? You might as well vote to re-elect
George Bush and Dick Cheney for another four years.

Bill
Press is host of a nationally syndicated radio show and author of a
new book, "How
the Republicans Stole Religion."
You can hear "The Bill Press Show" at billpressshow.com.
His email address is: bill@billpress.com. His Web site is:
www.billpress.com.