McCain - he'll go with any flow you name...

[acroyear]

McCain calls for "common sense conservatism" - Yahoo! News:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), taking the first step toward a 2008 White House bid, said on Thursday a return to principles of limited government and "common sense conservatism" would carry Republicans back to power after last week's election drubbing.

"We lost our principles and our majority. And there is no way to recover our majority without recovering our principles first," McCain told the Federalist Society

This text is almost word for word the post-election column from the Post's George Will. He's still stuck in base-playing, Karl Rove style, only he's now trying to play to three bases simultaneously, the "academic conservative", the big-business tax-cut conservative, and the religious right.  G.W. tried that and only got the latter two; he got the vote of the former 'cause they weren't going to trust "a liberal" to do anything right (either Gore or Kerry).

The problem: limited government and "common sense conservatism" don't exist when in tandem with the religious right, so he's playing two contrary cards at the same time and it's not going to work this time.

George Will also talked "common sense conservatism" a few weeks back when describing the not-very-limited interfering government No Child Left Behind law.  Will stated that he believed that most of the time "common sense" and "conservatism" mean the same thing.

However, his argument showed otherwise.  It is full of facts, figured, statistics, and reasoning.  In short: evidence.  Common sense is that which doesn't need "evidence" to be right, and as a result is usually wrong most of the time.

Evidence-based argument, supporting a claim with actual numbers and already addressing some easy skeptical concerns, is not common sense.

Would that it were...

Meanwhile, Mr. McCain - get a spine and get your own damn identity, like maybe in the form of an original thought or two?  This repeating everything anybody else says schtick is going to get old REAL fast, well before 2008 rolls around...

Comments

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The problem: limited government and "common sense conservatism" don't exist when in tandem with the religious right.

Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you thank you.

This, ever so succinctly put, is something I have been trying to explain to my republican friends *for years* as to why I find the GOP so repulsive.