Tuesday 27 May 2008

John McCain Hits Lefts Buttons

Clever old John McCain. I watched him today as he gave a speech at the University of Denver and the guy hit two hot button issues for the left and came away leaving more than few lefty eyebrows raised.
First up was the Environment which he promised to make it his number one priority and he has long been a champion of cleaning up the Environment.
Secondly admonished past Republicans and Democrats on their efforts to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He said: "If you look back over the past two decades, I don't think any of us, Republican or Democrat, can take much satisfaction in what we've accomplished to control nuclear proliferation." He then set out his plan to reduce Americas Nuclear capability to its absolute minimum, and cancelling the development of nuclear "bunker-busting" bombs and working with Russia and China to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
"Today, we deploy thousands of nuclear warheads. It is my hope to move as rapidly as possible to a significantly smaller force."
Over to you Obama because on two of the most leftwing issued you can find, McCain is stealing your ground.
All the credit to McCain because this will lose him votes from the more hardline right wingers but he is either putting his principles above the more rewarding perception of being a typical neo-conservative Republican and he should be applauded for that or he is making an excellent play of cutting Obama's legs from under him.
Over to you Obama.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lucy,

I'm pretty far right - as you know. I support elimination of nukes. The world doesn't need them. Of course, I'm not turning the other cheek - everybody else has to get rid of theirs at the exact same time.

I suspect China (1.2 billion people) would invade Russia (150 million people) for their natural resources about 5 minutes later, but that is another problem...

Q

Anne said...

his speech was laughable. i was wishing he'd give us a display of his well-known anger management problem, when the hecklers kept after him.

the scariest moment for me was when he declared that he would NEVER surrender in iraq, and yet gave a clear timeline as to when we'd be gone... 2013. really? why and how?

not sure if you caught obama's rebuttal yet, but i hope you have. it was stellar. i like how he/obama lets little time slip by before he speaks to the claims against him. a smart strategy.

Anonymous said...

All politicians tell lies. American politicians are in a gold medal class of their own.

American Indians, before genocide gobbled them up, described 'whitemen' as having 'forked tongues." They didn't even know about politicians then!

Anne said...

all politicians and most humans. we are a flawed lot, no doubt.

Cheezy said...

I think that both of these issues - but particularly the environment - tend to transcend traditional left/right politics. Tsuanamis, hurricanes, and melting ice-caps are no respecters of ideology after all.

As Annie says though, if Obama wants to outflank McCain in terms of 'progressive' politics, then he's providing ample room for him in terms of his 'Bushist' Iraq policy.

Not to mention McCain's 'senior moment' when he appeared to not know the difference between the Shi'ite and Sunni extremists in the region.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/19/mccain-repeats-iranal-qa_n_92349.html

Christ on a bike... Surely it won't be tough to appear the more informed and constructive candidate on this issue?

Anonymous said...

All the credit to McCain because this will lose him votes from the more hardline right wingers...

Perhaps not. Some on the right have seen the writing on the environmental wall and are now touting "stewardship" of the environment as godly. We'll see.

Falling on a bruise said...

Last time i looked, the hard right were still trying to claim the Environmentalist agenda as a hoax and i haven't ever stopped being bashed over the head for my CND stance by the more right wing leaning politicos . He has many faults and many of his arguments are crazy and dangerous but on these two issues, i have to agree with him 100%.
I haven't seen Obamas rebuttal yet Annie but i will try and hunt it down straight after i finish here.

Anonymous said...

ITA Lucy. The hard right is very anti-environment, even though it is trying to put on a moderate face.

I'll be interested to see Obama's response.

Jodie Kash said...

old is the operative word.