Senator John McCain’s Straight Party Ticket

I got a letter from Senator John McCain’s PAC, Straight Talk America, today. Seems the Sentator wants to "bring real reform to government, do away with ‘business as usual’, and help chart a new future to deal with our country’s most serious problems and needs." All that and and to get some traction in his Presidential bid, of course.

I don’t have any problem with a candidate, especially a Republican, who wants to run a campaign for the soul of his party. Lordy, but the GOP could use some saving from itself. Perhaps McCain wants to use his PAC to support candidates who share his progressive Conservative vision? Perhaps McCain will endorse and fund candidates who will "expose wrong government practices and policies and bring for effective solutions to strengthen our democracy"?

Or maybe Straight Talk is really more just a Straight GOP Ticket. I would expect that. I’m not naive; I don’t expect McCain to be supporting any Democrats. But you’d think that maybe he would discriminate between those who are screwing up his party, and those who are trying to save it. You’d be wrong.

Check out McCain’s endorsement list: Senator John McCain’s Straight Talk Endorsed Campaigns.

Here in Arizona he is supporting Kyl for Senate, and Renzi, Shadegg, and Flake for Congress. I wonder what Hayworth and Franks did to get on McCain’s shit list? It certainly isn’t their fiscal restraint. Trent and Hayworth scored 95 and 90% respectively in Citizens Against Government Waste’s Pigbook, while Renzi scored a measly 48%.

But, I rather expect a Senator running for President to support the GOP members of his delegation. I don’t hold that against him really. What really surprised me is some of the other GOP candidates he’s supporting as reformers, exposers of wrong government practices, and enemies of ‘business as usual’.

Let’s start with Brian Bilbray for Congress in California. A career lobbyist taking over for the corrupt, indicted Duke Cunningham who took bribes from lobbyists. Way to make a statement, Senator.

Let’s look at Jim Nussle for Governor in Iowa. Nussle has spent the last five years as Chairman of the House Budget Committee, dutifully doling out every dollar of deficit spending the Administration asked for, and then packing pork into every crevice to top it off. That 9 trillion dollar national debt? Thank Jim Nussle. Apparently, McCain must think he can do less harm in Iowa, so he’s supporting his candidacy there.

How about Trent Lott? McCain thinks he’s doing a dandy job of keeping those darkies in line down in the South for the GOP, and wants to give him another term. That’s mighty White of the Senator, don’t you think?

Guess who McCain thinks would make a dandy Governor for Ohio? That’s right – Ken Blackwell, the Secretary of State who stole the 2004 election for Bush. You’re doing a great job of strengthening our democracy, Blackie!

I guess keeping the snooping noses of the American Taliban out of our private parts wasn’t actually a listed value of the Straight Talk PAC. That’s a good thing because the Taliban’s own Rick Santorum gets McCain’s endorsement for re-election.

But don’t get the idea that McCain’s endorsement list consists entirely of cretins out to destroy America as we know it, there are a few endorsements that might even be considered brave given the degenerate state of the GOP, resembling as it does the island of the Lord of the Flies: Lincoln Chafee and Olympia Snowe (who are burned in effigy regularly at GOP Senate Caucus meetings) are on the list.

Perhaps the fact that so few real reformers show up on McCain’s list is not that doesn’t he choose to endorse sensible genuine conservatives, it’s that his party now produces so few of them that there really aren’t any to endorse. Pity.