I've read a lot of Republican-leaning websites where proprietors and commenters have excoriated John McCain for going against the party line from time to time. They say he does this simply because he enjoys being lauded as a "maverick" by the liberal media, and they deride what they call his self-serving ego.
Sometimes a criticism says more about the critic than its intended target. It does not seem to occur to them that principled opposition is possible. I think this is because so much of modern politics is not about principle, but about your side winning. If I am a member of Party X, then every official position of Party X is by definition good and right and what's best for the nation. Those evil bastards over in Party Y have as their only goal the destruction of everything true and decent. Or at least, that's what I'm expected to say publicly. It's all a game, and it's all about winning. Nothing else matters.
With so much that the Republican party has done under GWB being of dubious (to put it mildly) adherence to conservative principles – the creation of massive defecits via massive tax cuts and simultaneous massive increases in entitlements while also waging a war on the other side of the world, generally belligerent foreign policy – and with so many self-inflicted idiocies – invading the wrong four-letter Middle Eastern country starting with “Ira”, Harriet Miers, “great job, Brownie”, Abramoff – lockstep adherence to the party line is not something of which one should be proud.
So McCain isn’t a team player? Good. Because his team sucks.
(Yeah, I know. The other one sucks too.)
Posted by Mr Green at January 27, 2006 09:30 AM | TrackBack