A profile in GOP alternatives: John McCain

This is the fifth installment of my analysis of Obama's potential Republican foes in the general election. I have previously profiled Tommy Thompson, Jim Gilmore, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

As you can see from the above video, McCain is a serial flip-flopper. A CNN montage of clips shows that he also has serious anger issues. But, for a moment, I want to put aside McCain's ways of expressing himself (ie, switching between rapidly contradicting himself and getting angry), and talk about his supposedly "long, distinguished" carreer in the Senate.

Recently, McCain helped supress 97% percent of the pages from the congressional Jack Abramoff investigation. There's also his "Baghdad market stroll", where he said that the market was safe, but when he visted he needed to be accompanied by 8 humvees, 2 apache helicopters, and over 100 armed soldiers. But this wasn't simply a photo-op gome bad for McCain. Hours after he left the market, terrorists hunted down the people in the market photo-op and attacked them, resulting in an estimated 21 dead. Of course, those 21 dead are nothing compared to the total number who have died in this war that has gone on so long partly because of pro-war cheerleading by people like McCain.

Isn't John McCain a moderate, though? Not really. A lot of his more principled stands have been nothing more than Kabuki theatere. Consider his bill to ban torture in 2005. He fought and he fought for it, yet when it was ultimately passed, Bush used a signing statement to render it meaningless. What did we hear from McCain? Nothing. What's more, the next year, he voted in favor of the pro-torture Millitary Commisions Act of 2006. He also used to use the word "Gook" to describe people from Vietnam.

I want to close by sharing a piece of legislation co-sponsored by McCain. I think it demonstrates hall his flaws at once. It's the "Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act" and it allowed the FCC to raise fines for obscene language by 10 times their original amounts. This legislation isn't just contemptible for its trampling of our first amendment rights, it's extremely hypocritical of McCain to create hundred thoursand dollar penalties for swearing on air but say "fuck you" to his own Senate collegues.