I will be liveblogging the John McCain speech at the Celebration of American Values event at the NRA Annual Meeting. Keep checking back. This presumes that wireless holds up, and it’s been flakey.
3:00: Mitt Romney is speaking now. Still waiting for McCain.
3:15: Now it’s Congressman Dan Boren, D-OK
4:15: Senator Mitch McConnell, R-KY
4:20: McCain comes in and starts his speech. But we’re lined up for a photo op, up close.
4:30: McCain says he won’t support an assault weapons ban. Says banning guns based on cosmetic features makes no sense.
4:35: McCain says he supports the banning private sales, and campaign finance reform
4:37: McCain says he doesn’t support regulating sales between people within the same family.
4:40: McCain says his support of regulating private sales doesn’t detract from his support of the second amendment. Can’t say I agree with that one.
4:42: McCain reminds everyone that Obama wouldn’t sign onto the brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn the DC gun ban in Heller.
4:42: The theme seems to be “I suck a little, but my opponents suck more.”
4:43: McCain says that the framers knew exactly what they were doing when they drafted the constitution.
4:43: McCain stresses the importance of judges. In my view, this is the main reason for voting for him. He promises to nominate judges who will uphold the constitution, and not activist judges.
4:45: McCain is talking about differences between himself and Obama. Interesting that he’s pretty much running against Obama. At this point I think we just have to admit he’s the nominee.
4:46: McCain takes Obama to task for wanting to talk to our enemies instead of just kicking their asses.
4:48: McCain is going over the consequences of pulling out of Iraq. Says “It would be a terrible defeat for our security interests and our values.”
4:49: McCain says Petraeus has a plan, and it’s working, and things in Iraq are getting better.
4:51: McCain says he wants to bring our soldiers home too, but that he won’t ruin the sacrifice they have already made for this cause.
4:52: “I will defend her, and all her freedoms, so help me God”
That’s all folks. I suck at liveblogging. Off to drink like a fish with Michael Bane.
McCain signed onto this:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=105&session=1&vote=00205
before he came out with this:
http://www.johnmccain.com/climatechange/
With the constitution, I don’t trust him as far as I can spit.
He’s better than the alternative? Only time will tell. Until I see him actually fighting FOR the constitution, I’ll be waiting for the next election to see what worthless pieces of crap the two parties decide to nominate so that I can once again decide with to vote against. The days of voting for a candidate are, I fear, over.
Haven’t seen any discussion of the Olofson case though. Wonder why?
dc
McCain IS a liberal. Same-same as the other 2. The next Pres may get to nominate 2 or 3 to the Supreme Court. McCain will probably appoint someone of the same ilk as Souter. Remember him? G HW Bush put him in. Souter was supposed to be a “conservative”. Instead he’s the biggest lieberal on the Court. The only good part is that the judges leaving will be lieberals. So hopefully there won’t be a net loss to conservative.
I don’t know if I can stomach voting for McCain. Time will tell.
For all this talk of how liberal McCain is, he is 10x better than Bush on nearly every issue I can think of and most of you supposed conservatives eagerly voted for him.
You should vote for McCain because even if he is only 50 percent reliable at picking good judges, that will be enough to flip the court when Ginsburg and Stephens quit.
I totally agree with Jim W. McCain isn’t exactly my top pick, but if you guys consider Bush to be a conservative bastion, you’re obviously not the same kind of conservative I am…
“McCain says he supports the banning private sales, and campaign finance reform”
Not what I wanted to hear….
The question is whether or not fed.gov could get away with it. Their restrictions on selling to out of state residents relies on the commerce clause, but selling to your neighbor isn’t interstate commerce. I tend to think not, but who knows. If they can’t, then McCain can’t do any lasting damage (so long as he doesn’t completely fuck up any SCotUS picks). If they can, we may be screwed on that.
Still better than the alternative, but not by a long shot. I may have to get trashed in November to stand pulling the lever for this guy.
Bush and Rove ruined the Republican Party as a home to conservatives, now we get a middle-of the -roa big government guy like McCain as the nominee. He’s right, he does suck less than Obama, but he’s not a conservative by a long shot.
If the SCotUS up holds the right to ‘keep and bear’ you can expect a lot legislation to test the definition of ‘not be infringed’. Also, a number of single issue voters will not have a reason to vote straight Rep. Unless the Rep. Party gets organized along and adheres to conservative positions you can expect the GOP to disappear.
We didn’t exactly have a ton of great choices this time around.
We had Ron Paul, who wasn’t particularly charismatic. I like the guy and I agree with his views, but we need more Ronald Reagan types to sell this to a skeptical public.
We had Huckabee who actually a populist liberal- tax, spend and praise jesus. Fuck that.
We had Giuliani who is as far left as republicans get.
We had Fred Thompson, who put in a half-effort for a month and then folded.
Romney whose campaign died out, for reasons I can’t recall at the moment.
If Mitt Romney from Massachusetts is the closest we get to nominating a conservative candidate, I think it is time to just admit that it wasn’t in the cards this year and support the wishy-washy political opportunist who is so far promising to at least try to earn our vote.
basically with the heller decision due out in a month and the California decision that legalized gay marriage yesterday, this election is going to be a train wreck…
I’m gonna just grab a tub of popcorn and sit back to watch the fireworks.
Sooo…. let me get this right… Mr. Campain Finance Reform is going to nominate judges who uphold the constitution. Right. That must be of the living constitutiion variety. After all an activist judge is to a liberal someone who upholds the contitution.
As a hard-right conservative Libertarian, I’ve never voted for a Bush. CIA Director GHWB was a deep-penetration “mole” from the far-left, whose mission was to destroy the Republican party; I’ve been saying that since 1980.
A sometime-comic on the Web who went by the moniker of “Mr. Microphone” wrote, in 1999, that “George W. Bush was going to take advanced Conservative training, lest he turn to the Dark Side like his father before him.” Truer words were never spoken. Er, written.
The GOP is shambles, and no current candidate can resurrect it. 2008 is NOT the year to become President; either way, it’s going to be a disaster. I’d let Obama have it and let him destroy the Democrats as well, and let somebody else pick up the pieces in 2012.
That seems rather optimistic. He sucks a lot. Campaign finance reform remains craptastic and barely constitutional in practice, and has hit gun owners and gun catalogs before. “Closing the gunshow loophole” will, without the most delicate touch possible, result in giving the BATFE or FBI a good deal of power that they really don’t deserve to have — while I’d have no problem with the option of NICSing people before I sell a gun to them, I really don’t want some government agency tossing people in the clink for a half-dozen years because a glocker-ware party was or was not a gun show.
You guys didn’t get the memo that Bob Barr is going to run on the Libertarian platform?
You guys didn’t get the memo that Bob Barr is going to run on the Libertarian platform?
Unfortunately, no third party candidate stands a chance. Our president is GOING to be either Obama, McCain, or Hillary. It’d be nice if everyone decided to bail to third party tickets, but I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon.
Also, from what I’ve heard about Bob Barr, he’s about as libertarian as George Bush is.
Yeah, when I heard Bob Barr was running as a Libertarian party candidate I was excited, but then I started listening to him. I’m not excited anymore. I do think he will be good enough to split McCain’s vote and get Obama in the office. I’m not looking forward to the next four years, but hard to believe it will be worse than the “compassionate conservatism”. Don’t get me wrong… I think GWBs foreign policy has been right on… but he is Jimmy Carter the Second domestically. Our only hope is that the current Repub leadership gets excised in favor of conservative candidates, over the four years that the Democrats are destroying the country, and is ready to take over and pick up the pieces in 2012.
I cannot vote for Hillary Hussein McCain. While he may not suck as much, he still sucks. We keep voting for the lesser of two evils and getting stuck with evil.
Before you disagree with me ask yourself one question:
Are we winning yet?
The way I see it, we lose more and more ground every year on every issue. As long as we keep rewarding these politicians with the one thing they desire more than life itself, power, we will keep getting the same.
Politicians don’t like to lose, it is our only power over them.
There are options that may play out:
Chuck Baldwin on the Constitution Party ticket, he is very conservative. The party platform reads like a Republican campaign speech.
Bob Barr, mentioned above.
A write in of Ron Paul is also a possibility. He actually votes on Constitutional principles, just like relics from our past named Jefferson, Madison and Paine.
There is a perfect storm brewing for a third party, when you look at the divided Democrats, more than 50% of Obama’s supporters state they refuse to vote Hillary and vice versa.
The Republican candidate is a sheep in wolfs clothing, the Conservatives in the party are either irate or going to stay home come November.
In 1992 Ross Perot received over 19% of the ballots cast as a third party candidate. This was a time of relative calm in America, with a smaller national debt by a magnitude. We had just won a war in 17 days. Our manufacturing base still existed. China was still a third world country. There was no pending food crisis. There was no energy crisis.
The Republican Party is on its way to becoming a footnote in history. I fully expect the Democrats to pick up 24 or more house seats and as many as 9 senate seats, which will put them over 60, veto-proof.
Remember, the Republican Party was a third party that Conservatives flocked too when the Whig party refused to alter its pro-slavery stance.
Isn’t the issue today slavery as well?
With the house and senate beyond reach, all a McCain presidency could do would be to cross the isle and sing Kumbaya, which he enjoys very, very much.
If the national vote is divided 4, 5 or more ways, who knows what could happen. We routinely elect a president with 42% of the vote, if one is picked, no matter which one, with 30% or less of the total vote we will have sent a very powerful message.
“A vote cast in good conscience is never a wasted vote” John Adams
After all has been said, I plan to vote for Ron Paul.
Gentlmen, pray for America.
“most of you supposed conservatives eagerly voted for him. ”
I suspect I speak for a lot of regulars when I throw up a big bullshit flag on this. Few of the regulars on this forum, or the other big ones like SayUncle, “eagerly” voted for Bush. Unless you consider “eager” to be defined as “this guy makes me want to vomit just slightly less than the other”, you’re pretty far off base on that one.
I haven’t eagerly voted for anyone for president since I became legally eligible to vote.