A Conservative Talks about John McCain

Thanks to the Family Taxpayers Network’s John Biver for pointing me toward Oklahoma United States Senator Tom Colburn’s introduction of his colleague John McCain at Thursday’s Conservative Politial Action Committee Convention.

I am going to pull parts from it, but you can read it all in Biver’s column or here.

First, you should know that Dr. Tom Colburn is one of very few congressmen who ran on a 1994 platform supporting term limits and actually retired from the U.S. House of Representatives when he said he would. In 2004, he ran for the U.S. Senate and won.

Since then, he has led the Senate fight against pork.

With that background, here is what impressed me most about his introductory remarks:

As conservatives, I know that most of us are sick and tired of politicians who tell us what we want to hear then govern in the opposite way. We won’t have that problem with John McCain. He may not always tell us what we want to hear, but he will say what he means and do what he says…

I trust John McCain because he possesses the rarest virtue in politics upon which all else depends – courage. He has risked his political life during this presidential campaign. In defense of the unpopular surge in Iraq, John McCain said, “I’d rather lose the presidency than lose the war.” John McCain may win the presidency precisely because he was willing to let it go in service to his country…

Was the Bridge to Nowhere and an explosion of earmarks part of the GOP conservative agenda? John McCain was one of only 11 Republicans who supported me in my fight to kill the Bridge to Nowhere. Most Republicans were marching off the bridge we were trying to de-fund…

John McCain will declare war on pork – the gateway drug to spending addiction in Congress – on day one. There will be no earmarks for teapot museums, First Lady Libraries and taxpayer-funded hippie flashbacks in a McCain administration…

The new prescription drug entitlement our party leadership pushed on us was part of the GOP agenda but it wasn’t part of the conservative agenda. John McCain had the foresight to vote against Medicare Part D, the largest entitlement expansion since Lyndon Johnson, when many Republicans were AWOL…

When most Republicans were trying to build a governing majority through pork – and were growing the government faster than the Democrats who came before us – John McCain was pushing the party in the opposite direction on key issues…

On judges, I wouldn’t have endorsed John McCain if I wasn’t confident he will nominate judges like the ones he has voted to confirm in the Senate: Bork, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown…

On immigration, John McCain was trying to solve a problem which, incidentally, hasn’t improved much. He listened and learned and decided the facts were on our side. He doesn’t have a secret plan to enact blanket amnesty as president. And, if he did, he knows I’d kill it…

Still, I have to say that the concerns I hear about John McCain pale in comparison to the two greatest challenges facing our country – terrorism and a Congress that refuses to correct our unsustainable fiscal course. If we get all of those other issues right but those two issues wrong we won’t survive as a nation…

And, on national security, John McCain is by far the most qualified candidate on either side. He will meet not only the security challenges we know about but, more importantly, those we don’t know about. Tyrants and terrorists will think twice about challenging the United States with John McCain in the White House.

Is John McCain perfect? No. Will we disagree with him sometimes? Yes. But, elections are about choices.

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The picture was taken February 1, 2008, at the John McCain rally in eastern DuPage County.


Comments

A Conservative Talks about John McCain — 1 Comment

  1. Too bad John McCain has sold out the Republican Party’s true conservative values for the continuement of Bush Administration thinking. John McCain will continue the Iraq war, get involved with Iran, and a loss of civil liberties will again continue. When will the Republicans wake up and see that the establishment is selling them and their futures away? Patriot Acts 1&2, Military Commissions Act of 2006, Homegrown Terrorist and Radicalization Prevention Act of 2007, Real ID Act of 2005. Privacy in this country is dead because of some old white men fearmongering. Cut short, the Republican Party will curb your civil liberties, start more wars, and spend the US into oblivion. The path we are going down is not a sustainable future; we must work to fix a broken system.

    Vote Ron Paul 2008!

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