John McCain And The GOP Base

August 30, 2008 | Filed Under Dan Scott, Elections, GOP, Government, Corruption, Media Bias, News, President, Publius Contributor, Security/Safety, Society/Culture |

-By Dan Scott

John McCain has made a sensible choice in Gov. Sarah Palin for VP. According to her bio she is a member of the National Rifle Association, making her John McCain’s version of Dick Cheney, but it’s not likely she will miss the lawyer when she goes hunting. Her executive experience running a city and state bureaucracy is more than McCain, Obama and Biden combined. Her stances on various issues goes a long way to mollify the conservative base that what we have in Sarah Palin may be access to McCain’s ear and that is a good first step to energizing the base with enthusiasm. But as the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

The GOP platform has been firmed up to reflect the beliefs of the party base. But, there is a problem, John McCain does not reflect some of the important values held by the GOP base. We don’t expect 100% agreement, however, there are significant points of disagreement on which neither John McCain or the base have agreed to disagree. That is, the base up to this point does not have an assurance from John McCain that when he becomes President of these United States, he will not seek to implement his own agenda contrary to the wishes of those who elected him. This is ordinarily a pitfall of any elected official but more so with John McCain as he is a known self professed maverick and does not reflect the majority of GOP member’s values in these very divisive areas.

Those areas of extreme disagreement are AGW, illegal immigration and embryonic stem cell research. Each one of these areas carries huge dollar outlays in the billions by their implementation and we consider these to be frauds perpetrated upon the taxpayers. So let’s examine them one by one to flush out what’s at stake and unless both sides can agree to disagree with the firm understanding that there will be no unilateral implementation on John McCain’s part without dire consequences to the unity of the GOP backing him. It should go without saying, but it seems it needs to be said, there will be consequences to a McCain administration if it feels it can govern without the express consent of the governed. Those consequences will be zero political support from the base and obstruction from Representatives and Senators who better reflect the values of the GOP base. If people think the last eight years of the Bush Administration were difficult due to the shrillness of the MSM and obstructionist tactics of the Democrats, we promise four years of misery in spades to McCain.

John McCain has said he believes in AGW and floated the idea that even if it were later found not to be true, we as a country would still benefit from the attempt to achieve CO2 reductions via technology and efficiency. That sounds like a reasonable proposition on the surface, however, as we have discovered none of the alternatives floated by the AGW extremists are cost effective compared to nuclear, oil and natural gas. So far John McCain has mouthed the right words regarding nuclear power, drilling for more oil and such, but can we believe him? Will he move to repeal the ethanol mandates and subsidies which hike food prices and do nothing for energy security? He has come out for a Cap & Trade on CO2, which is totally ineffective and costly as the Europeans are now finding out. Any Cap & Trade is a deal breaker, if alternative energy cannot make it on it’s own merits without mandates and subsidies this will mean billions upon billions a year of taxpayer and private investment dollars frittered away in unproductive transfer payments. Most Americans view this as a very low priority.

John McCain has said he heard the people when it comes to securing the borders first against illegal immigration and terrorism. Has he? He has also said that once this is done he will work on bringing the current illegal aliens working here out of the shadows, we call this amnesty for breaking the law, repeatedly. The Bush Administration is working mightily to finish the 700 miles of border fencing before the next president takes office. So in the first year of his term are we going to hear from John McCain “mission accomplished” on border security and then he will start working on a non-amnesty amnesty? That is a deal breaker as the people have clearly indicated they prioritize the upholding of the current laws as one of the most important functions of government. We already have a temporary worker program in place, the problem is it is poorly administered, in fact half of all illegals who came here did so legally on a temporary work visa but overstayed. There is no limit on the total number of nonimmigrants admitted each year. Although there is no overall cap on how many nonimmigrants can be admitted to the United States per year, Congress sets a numerical limit for some categories of nonimmigrants. These categories currently include temporary skilled workers (65,000 H-1B skilled occupation visas for first-time applicants plus 20,000 visas for foreign graduates of US advanced degree programs), seasonal nonagricultural workers (66,000 H-2B visas), treaty aliens in specialty occupations (10,500 E-3 visas), victims of trafficking (5,000 T-1 visas), and victims of criminal activity (10,000 U-1 visas). Any high school student can tell you that temporary means not permanent, i.e. the people who come here must also go back to where they came from. If ICE issues 66,000 H-2B visas for temporary seasonal workers, we expect to see 66,000 people go back to where they came from when the visa is up, and NOT fail to verify they went home before they issue another 66,000 more visas the following year. The same goes for the H-1B visas. If they only verify 1,000 go back, then they should only be issuing 1,000 visas the following year and they darn well had better be hunting down the other 65,000 to deport them. We have no problem with visa extensions but it is not reasonable to just keep increasing the number of visa violators. As far as the H-1B visas are concerned, in light of the over 8.7 million people who are unemployed in this country, what makes John McCain think we need any more skilled foreign workers? You have heard of job retraining? Why are we outsourcing engineering students by flooding the market with foreigners?

Finally, the most divisive issue of all, embryonic sell research. John McCain nuanced his position to that of only using the existing stem cell lines before the Federal ban took effect, this however is still out of step with the value system of the GOP base on the issue. But let’s lay that aside for now. How can John McCain as a candidate (so called fiscal conservative) justify wasting billions of taxpayer dollars every year on a dead end line of research? Scientists have tried for years to make it work, what they ended up with is producing tumors, we all call this failure. Why insist on throwing more good money after bad in a vain attempt to make embryonic stem cells work? What’s more, adult and cord blood stem cells have made hundreds of therapies without the billions of taxpayer dollars. If any taxpayer dollars are to be spent in an effort to alleviate suffering, let it be cost effective, that is, help as many people as you KNOW you can instead of throwing money aimlessly in the vain hope some good may occur. Given the billions of taxpayer (federal and state) dollars already wasted on this dead end line of research, quite frankly using the other two lines of stem cells may well have already yielded a cure by now for Alzheimers and Dementia had the money been directed along those more proven lines. That, John McCain, is the real crime of misspent research dollars, the diseases that could have been cured and people living in dignity instead of wasted on PC panaceas. Stop advocating the waste of taxpayer dollars, this is a deal breaker as it shows he is not willing to respect the hundreds of hours laboring by the taxpayer to come up this money in the first place. It’s the taxpayer’s hard earned money, not the government’s to waste, get that straight!

Gov. Sarah Palin as a choice for VP aside, if we who find McCain seriously flawed must hold our noses until they bleed or we pass out to vote for him in order to insure Obama does not take the Whitehouse, then we will have to be very active in the political process during his administration. Given that McCain is a supporter of wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on AGW CO2 reduction, amnesty for illegals and embryonic stem cell research he leaves much to be desired. If conservatives are forced into this most unseemly arrangement, then it is entirely the responsibility of the base to obstruct every piece of legislation for the next four years where any of these odious frauds are proposed. If McCain and his so called bipartisan allies think the next four years are going to be a cake walk on these issues, by the time we are done, he is going to think the last eight years of the Bush Admin were the glory days. The ball is in John McCain’s court, if he wants our unqualified enthusiastic support, he needs to assure us that he will not only do what he says he will do, but just as importantly not do what we the voters told him we don’t want him to do. So far on the second part we don’t have any warm fuzzies coming from his direction.
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Dan Scott calls himself a “Member of the Global Capitalist Cabal preaching Capitalism and personal responsibility as the economic solution to world poverty.” He is also a member of the 14th Amendment Society — victimhood is a liberal code word for denying the civil rights of others. He is also a proud member of the Global Warming Denier Cabal, insisting that facts not agendas determine the truth.

Dan can be seen on the web at http://www.geocities.com/fightbigotry2002/ as well as http://www.geocities.com/dscott8186/saidwebpage.htm, And can be reached for comments at dscott8186@yahoo.com.

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