DragonFlight

This is not rational, even for them. They can’t simultaneously distance themselves from the results of eight years of Republican leadership, and also offer up more of the same. The only other possibility is a blatant admission that they do indeed put party before nation, and they aren’t about to admit that. Instead, they are slyly agreeing with those first using change as an issue, the Democrats, all the while claiming it as their own idea.

Sure, the GOP will talk about how “politics as usual” needs to be revamped. They’ll go on about how certain elements of the Clinton years were unacceptable (to them), and they’ll attempt to level the playing field by admitting both parties in some ways have faults necessitating reformation. Yet the major, and quite obvious fly in the Republican ointment remains, the past eight years.

Of course no one is denying the presence of the gorilla in the room; it would be impossible. The national debt and deficit are higher than ever. Americans are losing their homes, jobs and pensions while more jobs are being lost and outsourced than created, and unemployment is topping 6%. Millions are still without health care and countless others are losing it, yet we are still spending $9-12 billion dollars per month in Iraq, not to mention the increased loss of both lives and resources in Afghanistan; and there is no real end in sight in either conflict.

The absence of both Cheney and Bush at the RNC speaks volumes. The excuse? Hurricane Gustav. That excuse morphed from somewhat possibly plausible to absolutely lame, as Gustav fizzled out at the last, and the RNC was business as usual for most of the week. And considering how very important both party conventions were at this particular time and in this particular election, there is no way the inability of the leaders of the party to hand over the torch at the convention would normally have been justified. The truth is, no one in the GOP wanted to remind those at the convention, and more succinctly, those millions watching on TV, why change has become the mantra of both parties -- the past eight years.

John McCain has also been scrambling away from government policies of the past eight years, all the while sticking to them like mud. It’s one thing to repudiate your association with a particular mindset, and another to actually demonstrate it.

The fact is, this once touted “maverick” is no longer a maverick. There is a cost for voting with a failed president 90 % of the time, and there is a price to pay for pandering for votes with groups that align him with the Administration instead of distancing him from it. All the issues McCain has changed his mind about have been thoroughly vetted here and elsewhere, and there is no need to repeat them ad nauseam. I’ll mention only one because I deem it to be the most reprehensible (for him).

In February of this year, an article in the New York Times revealed that, “Senator John McCain’s vote last week against a bill to curtail the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of harsh interrogation tactics disappointed human rights advocates who consider him an ally and led Democrats to charge that he was trying to please Republicans as he seeks to rally them around his presidential bid."

We have heard and viewed countless reports and documentaries enumerating the trials and tribulations of Lieutenant Commander John McCain while he was a POW for five and one half years during the Vietnam War. We have applauded his courage and service, all the while commiserating with him over the years of torture and inhumane treatment he was forced to endure. Most automatically assume that such an individual, by default, would object to torture in any way, shape or form. And at first, John McCain did, before he didn’t.

In an article entitled, “McCain Rebukes Giuliani on Waterboarding Remark,” by Michael Cooper and Marc Santora, published in the New York Times on October, 26, 2007, it is stated that Rudolph Giuliani’s uncertainty whether waterboarding was torture, “drew a sharp rebuke yesterday from Senator John McCain, who said that his failure to call it torture reflected his inexperience.” He continued, “All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today,” Mr. McCain, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, said in a telephone interview.”

McCain also stated, as reported in the Des Moines Register on October 25, 2007, “Waterboarding is a form of torture no matter how it is done and should be a prohibited among U.S. military interrogation practices, Republican presidential candidate John McCain said today, taking issue with GOP rival Rudy Giuliani’s recent remarks.”

John McCain has also stated, “People who have worn the uniform and had the experience know that this is a terrible and odious practice and should never be condoned in the U.S. We are a better nation than that.”

If McCain, a person continually and cruelly tortured while in captivity is himself capable of such an extreme turn about on the subject of torture, and can suddenly condone it at election time, I’m not sure there is anything the man might say on the campaign trail that I can accept without serious questions and doubts automatically arising in my mind. Perhaps McCain has misconstrued change to mean a constant and consistent changing of one’s mind in order to garner votes? Enough said!

What a major conundrum for the GOP and the Republican right! Forced to adopt a platform of change because even they have no choice but to admit the nation is in dire need of it, and, because the Democrats, especially the Obama and Clinton campaigns, were quick to make change a slogan; they are confronted with a major oxymoron. On the one hand, the Republicans finally admit what almost everyone in the nation already realizes, namely there IS that 800-pound gorilla in the room, and as it turns out, it is THEM!

Footnote: There may indeed be another gorilla in the mix. As the media slowly and meticulously begins to uncover all the recent lies, distortions and distractions surrounding John McCain’s choice for vice president, a new gorilla, perhaps only a 500-pounder, is becoming apparent, namely Sarah Palin.