Candidate McCain in Search of Conservatives

Commentary
By Scott McLean

Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) is running for president, or at least it looks that way. McCain is known as a fiscal conservative and is hoping to set himself apart by stressing his conservatism.

Last week at a Federal Society dinner, McCain said Republicans lost their majorities in Congress because they abandoned their political beliefs of limited government. The senator's remarks are in a press release on his web site. (I'll add my thoughts, but first let's see what he said on the topic of conservatism.)

“Hypocrisy, my friends, is the most obvious of political sins. And the people will punish it. We were elected to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. We increased the size of government in the false hope that we could bribe the public into keeping us in office. And the people punished us. We lost our principles and our majority. And there is no way to recover our majority without recovering our principles first," McCain said.

Now what I wanted to say:

First, I agree. Republican politicians lost their advantage on the money issues. Republican candidates over the years have won elections by criticizing Democrats for raising taxes and then spending the money.

Now, Republicans are spending money like it grows on trees, and instead of finding revenues to offset the spending, they have chosen to run up huge deficits, adding to the national debt.

There seems to be little interest in reducing waste in spending on the war in Iraq. Conflicting priorities is one reason. Conservatives typically support a strong defense, the meaning of which has been expanded over the past five years to protecting the United States from terrorism and going after terrorists abroad.

I believe there should be limits on this so-called war on terror.

The congressional elections showed Americans are fed up with this war in Iraq without timetables, without spending limits and without limits to how many casualties are too many.

After Republicans got trounced in the elections, some conservative radio talk show hosts made excuses and said the majority of Americans are still conservatives.

I'm not listening anymore to them put down liberals and moderates. This evening I was just flipping the radio dial and got an earful of them saying more angry words. They get paid big money to mouth off and say some absurd things.

I don't believe most Americans are conservatives, as they claim, but I do think Americans want Congress to quit wasting so much money on the war.