Terry Cowgill

On This of All Days, I’ve Been Outed

May 26, 2008 on 4:10 pm | In Race for Prez |

I don’t usually do this — devote an entire post to a comment on a previous post. But here goes …

In a comment left on my post about how Obama will lose to McCain, Kathy Lauretano described me as — and you might want to make sure you are sitting down while reading this — “a kool-aid drinker of left-wing talking points and propaganda,” as well as a partisan afflicted with “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” The goofy pic at right pretty much captures my reax.

I’ve been called a lot of things in my time — a smear artist, a label-maker and a Rush wannabe, but never a mindless lefty. Evidently Kathy thinks it’s OK to criticize Obama but not McCain because the latter is a great guy and a man of substance. Say what?

First, Kathy, I did not ridicule McCain’s age. I called him an old man, which by any objective measure he is. As for flip-flopping, perhaps you haven’t noticed that McCain has changed his mind on the Bush tax cuts, torture, the religious right as “agents of intolerance,” ethanol subsidies, overturning Roe v Wade, to name a few. Plus, he is a hypocrite on campaign finance and a man of towering moral vanity.

McCain has aligned himself with Bush on the Iraq war and (once the presidential campaign began) the economy. Bush signed McCain-Feingold, so they even wound up agreeing on that. They do disagree on issues such as climate change and drilling for oil in ANWR, but at the end of the day, their differences are relatively minor.

The big change from Bush would the abandonment of his my-way-or-the-highway arrogance. For conservatives like you, another advantage to a McCain presidency would be that the chickenhawk argument, long trotted out by the left on the necons, would completely evaporate.

After all, McCain not only spent five years in the Hanoi Hilton, but he has a son who is completing his second tour of duty in Iraq. It’ll give the DailyKos and MoveOn a little less to write about, eh?

BTW I agree with you that Democrats who insist the 2000 election was stolen should concede the same thing about 1960. On the 100 years comment, I agree that McCain has gotten a bum rap for that. But when I mentioned it in conjunction with the “warmonger” label, I was speaking with the voice of the left. In other words, this is how they will frame the argument: “He’s an old warmonger and Bush clone who wants to keep us there for 100 years.”

OK now, anyone care to call me some other names? This is fun …