John McCain Promises Oregon Families a Third Bush Term
Democratic Party
of Oregon
232 NE 9th Ave.
Portland, OR 97232
(503) 224-8200
For Immediate Release
Thursday, February 7, 2008
John McCain
Promises Oregon
Families a Third Bush Term
Portland -
Democratic Party of Oregon Chair Meredith Wood Smith today responded to the
news that Mitt Romney's departure from the presidential campaign left John
McCain and the Double Talk Express at the head of the Republican Party. Throughout the campaign, McCain has been
working overtime to remake himself into a candidate the right wing of the
Republican Party can accept.
Even today, during remarks sandwiched between Vice President
Cheney today and President Bush tomorrow at the annual Conservative Political
Action Conference, McCain claimed to be a consistent conservative in a speech
loaded with double talk on everything from pork spending, to immigration
reform, to the Bush tax cuts.
McCain bragged about his support for extending the
President's reckless tax cuts, but failed to mention that he voted against
them. He claimed to have stood by his
immigration reform proposal even though he said just last week that he would
vote against it if it returned to the Senate floor.
He pledged not to sign any spending bill with earmarks,
despite pushing his own earmarks for Arizona while
in Congress and relying on one of Washington's
most successful pork lobbyists to fund his campaign.
And he claimed to have campaigned against ethanol subsidies
in Iowa despite
pandering to Iowans by calling himself a "strong" ethanol supporter.
[Fortune, 10/31/06]
"Campaign McCain's ‘extreme makeover' may help him pander to
the right wing of the Republican Party, but the rest of Oregon's working
families have already figured out that the Real McCain can't be trusted to
provide the change they need," Wood Smith said.
"Whether he is pining for a 100 year war in Iraq, supporting efforts to
make the same Bush tax cuts he once opposed permanent, or supporting President
Bush's veto of health care for 10 million children, John McCain has promised
that a vote for McCain is a vote for a third Bush term."
John McCain Said He'd
Vote Against the Immigration Bill He Wrote.
Asked by Janet Hook of the Los Angeles Times during the
debate if his "original proposal came to the Senate floor, would you vote
for it?" McCain tried to argue it would not come up for a vote, but then
admitted, "No, I would not."
[CNN debate, 1/30/08; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M34KKaczvKg]
Willing to Spend 'a
Hundred Years' or a 'Million Years' in Iraq.
McCain interrupted a voter during a townhall meeting in New
Hampshire telling him it "may be a hundred" years in Iraq and
"that would be fine with me." After the townhall meeting, he told a
reporter "that U.S.
troops could be in Iraq
for 'a thousand years' or 'a million years,' as far as he was concerned."
[Derry, NH townhall meeting, 1/3/08;
motherjones.com, 1/3/08]
Wants to Overturn Roe
v. Wade.
At an appearance in Spartanburg,
South Carolina last year John
McCain said "I do not support Roe v. Wade, it should be overturned."
[Fox News, 2/19/07]
McCain Supported
Bush's Veto of SCHIP and Providing Insurance For Millions of Uninsured
Children.
McCain voted against reauthorizing the State Children's
Health Insurance Program for five years and expanding the program by $35.2
billion.
[Senate Vote #307, 8/2/07]
Voted For Bush Tax
Cuts And Defended The Flip-Flop As A Legislative Gimmick. John McCain voted
to extend tax cuts supported by the president that were set to expire between
2005 and 2010. "The Senate voted 53-47...in favor of extending the
president's investor tax cuts on dividends and capital gains." McCain's
vote was described as "a sharp reversal of his anti-tax-cut posture,"
though he defended the shift, saying, "it was a gimmick," reasoning
that "the tax cuts were temporary and then had to be made permanent. The
tax cuts are now there and voting to revoke them would have been to--not to
extend them would have meant a tax increase. I've never voted for a tax
increase in my life."
[Senate vote #10, H.R. 4297, 2/2/06, passed 66-31; New York
Times, 2/21/06; Washington
Times, 3/6/06; NBC News, 4/2/06]
Campaign McCain
Embraces Jerry Falwell after Denouncing Him as "Agents of
Intolerance."
McCain told the Christian Broadcast Network, "'I have
had meetings with [Southern Baptist Convention President] Dr. Richard Land. I
have met with Reverend Jerry Falwell. I have had good conversations with
[Evangelical leader] Reverend [John] Hagee. There are many others. Now I have
not had a conversation with Dr. [James] Dobson because he has said he prays
that I will not be the nominee of the party. I'm not sure where we start the
conversation.' McCain has had a rocky relationship with religious conservatives
going back to 2000, when he branded the Reverends Jerry Falwell and Pat
Robertson as 'agents of intolerance.'"
[CBN.com, 3/19/07, http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/122005.aspx]
McCain Hired Swift
Boat Advertising Firm Designed to Attack Veterans.
"Senator John McCain, intent on succeeding where his
freewheeling presidential campaign of 2000 failed, is assembling a team of
political bruisers for 2008. And it includes advisers who once sought to skewer
him and whose work he has criticized as stepping over the line in the past. In
2000, Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, said the advertisements run against
him by George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, distorted his record. But he has
hired three members of the team that made those commercials -- Mark McKinnon,
Russell Schriefer and Stuart Stevens -- to work on his presidential campaign.
In 2004, Mr. McCain said the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advertisement
asserting that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts
had not properly earned his medals from the Vietnam War was 'dishonest and
dishonorable.' Nonetheless, he has hired the firm that made the spots, Stevens
Reed Curcio & Potholm, which worked on his 2000 campaign, to work for him
again this year.
[New York
Times, 2/4/07]
McCain: More of the
Same Bush Supreme Court.
"I would appoint justices such as the ones I've
strongly supported and gotten through the Senate with the help of many others
or help along with others. Only those who strictly interpret the constitution
of the United States and do not legislate from the bench...If you have justices
that have a clear, conservative, a clear, strict interpretation of the constitution
of the United States, then you don't have to worry about what their decisions
will be."
[Fox News Sunday, 2/3/2008]
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