The Pander Bear

Crooks and Liars:

The far-right Washington Times ran an item on the front page, under the headline, “McCain refuses to pander.”

• One wonders which McCain the Washington Times is talking about. Amanda at TP noted that the Arizona senator was clearly pandering to the GOP’s conservative activists when he abandoned his previous position on waterboarding, which was only the latest in a series of recent pander-fests from the likely Republican presidential nominee.
  
• Pander On Tax Cuts: In 2001, McCain was one of just two GOP senators to vote against Bush’s destructive tax cuts. Now, however, McCain makes a point of touting his support for making Bush’s tax cuts permanent.
  
• Pander On Stimulus: For the past few months, McCain has been declaring that passing an economic stimulus package is at the very top of his agenda. Yet when the Senate voted earlier this month on a generous bill providing increased assistance to seniors and veterans, McCain skipped the vote. The bill fell just one vote short of passage, a victory for the far right.
  
• Pander To Karl Rove: In the 2000 presidential campaign, Karl Rove launched vicious smear tactics against McCain on behalf of Bush’s campaign. Recently, however, McCain has embraced the right-wing political operative. He said that he has “always respected Karl Rove as one of the smart great political minds I think in American politics” and specifically refused to condemn Rove’s partisan smears.

Those are all excellent recent examples, but if we look back just a little bit further, Sen. McCain’s (R-Pandertown) shameless record emerges in even more detail.

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