Can We Stop Genuflecting before John McCain now?

I didn't have a DADT chart...

Soooo, Obama is a terrible negotiator and obsessed with compromising with himself.  His efforts vis a vis the economy have been insufficient half measures.

But man is he better than the alternative.

First, John McCain knows as much about economics as I know about piloting Navy jets.  Just about every independent economist has found that the stimulus - though too small to restart the economy - did prevent a full scale meltdown in the economy.  The least effective part was probably the tax cuts.  A McCain administration likely would have addressed the 2009 crisis with tax cuts for billionaires.  Don't believe me?  Look at what the GOP is proposing now.

Secondly, McCain's primary appeal as a candidate was his personal honor.  Here was a guy who was a "maverick".  He was mavericky in a really independent type of cowboy maverickitude.  McCain was a straight shooter.

I think we can bury that forever.  First, his flip-flops on immigration are embarrassing.  He went from being one of the few people in Washington seemingly intent on dealing with immigration in a substantive manner to being a "build the dang wall" old coot.  You can argue that he had to do this to win votes in Nazizona.  OK, but he won.  Where's his mavericky independence now?  He has 6 years before he stands for election again.

But the ultimate embarrassment has to be his recent egregious capitulation to bigotry on Don't Ask Don't Tell.  He always defended DADT on the grounds that it was what the military high command wanted and what the troops required.  Now, both the JCS, the DoD and the troops themselves have said, repeal DADT.

McCain is ignoring them.  There are ample quotes to show McCain's hypocrisy on this issue.

Ultimately, supporting DADT is about bigotry.  The military has stripped away the whole arguments as to troop morale and readiness.  Seventy percent of active duty troops either support repeal or don't care.  Those numbers are greater than contemporaneous support for racial integration or gender integration in previous generations.

The American people support overturning this policy.  The troops support overturning this policy.  The general staff supports overturning this policy.

Maybe that's the new maverickyness of John McCain.

Of course, in a few months a federal judge will rightly overthrow the law anyway.  McCain and his GOP bigot brigade could allow the military to smoothly transition away from DADT or he could let the courts intervene and allow the culture wars to continue.  McCain - of all GOP Senators - is positioned to heal the country on this issue.

Instead he wants to further divide it.  He wants to perpetuate the Rovian wedge-issue, divide-and-conquer strategy.

Shame on him.