Also see:
AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications •
Also see below:
Isaiah J. Poole | Sour Notes on Social Security •
Go to Original
McCain Clinches GOP Presidential Nomination
By Michael D. Shear and Peter Slevin
The Washington Post
Wednesday 05 March 2008
Huckabee drops out as Senator wins four
primaries.
Sen. John McCain clinched the Republican presidential nomination last night,
and immediately castigated his potential Democratic rivals as liberals who lack
the experience and wisdom to lead a country facing economic distress at home
and engaged in war abroad.
The senator from Arizona easily won primaries in Texas and three other states,
becoming the new face of the Republican Party and, at last, capturing the prize
that had eluded him for a decade. The victories ended one of the great tests
of political endurance for a man whose personal mettle was forged by five years
in a North Vietnamese prison.
His political ambitions were dashed in 2000 by George W. Bush and again seemed
to end last summer amid staff infighting and financial chaos. But McCain soldiered
on, emerging last night as the far-from-universal choice of a fractured Republican
Party. His remaining rival, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, captured
about a third of the vote in Texas, signaling the frustrations that conservatives
still feel about McCain.
By night's end, though, Huckabee had dropped out. The White House announced
that McCain would receive President Bush's endorsement after a lunch intended
to cement the senator as the political heir of his former rival.
Campaigning in Texas yesterday, McCain told reporters that he will "await
the outcome" on the Democratic side. But in his victory speech at the Fairmont
Hotel in Dallas, he made it clear that he will begin immediately to make his
case that the country cannot afford to have either Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
or Sen. Barack Obama as president.
"I will leave it to my opponent to argue that we should abrogate trade
treaties, and pretend the global economy will go away and Americans can secure
our future by trading and investing only among ourselves," he said to a
screaming crowd. "I will leave it to my opponent to propose returning to
the failed, big-government mandates of the '60s and '70s to address problems
such as the lack of health-care insurance for some Americans."
McCain added enough delegates last night to take him over the 1,191 he will
need at the party's national convention in September. Huckabee conceded after
the polls closed, saying he called McCain to congratulate him for an "honorable"
campaign and pledging "to do everything possible to unite our party, but
more importantly to unite our country."
Standing in front of a banner with the number "1,191" on it and flanked
by two large American flags, McCain vowed that his campaign "will be more
than another tired debate of false promises, empty sound bites, or useless arguments
from the past." He focused much of his speech on terrorism and the Iraq
war.
"America is at war in two countries and involved in a long and difficult
fight with violent extremists who despise us, our values and modernity itself,"
he said. "It is of little use to Americans for their candidates to avoid
the many complex challenges of these struggles by re-litigating decisions of
the past."
Those who cast ballots in Texas and Ohio, the two biggest contests, overwhelmingly
supported McCain. He won easily among independents, Republicans, men and women,
and those of all ages.
But several groups of voters continued to express their dislike of McCain.
Evangelicals and Texans who call themselves "very conservative" voted
for Huckabee in greater numbers. The senator also lost among people who said
their top issue was making sure the candidate shared their values.
Looking toward the long march to November, McCain acknowledged that he will
need to raise more money and find a way to pull together a Republican Party
whose splits have been revealed in the primaries, with the underfunded Huckabee
winning a string of unlikely victories.
"We have a lot of work to do to unite our party and to energize it,"
said McCain, who will head to Palm Beach, Fla., to begin a swing dominated by
intensive fundraising.
Charles Black, his top political fundraiser, said a priority will be to meet
with officials at the Republican National Committee to mobilize the national
and state parties, which will be critical to the general election.
Now that he has become the de facto head of the GOP, McCain will essentially
take over the committee's operations, turning its research, get-out-the-vote
efforts and communications into an arm of his campaign.
Looking toward November, McCain has so far aimed much of his criticism at Obama,
whose performance leading up to last night's primaries appeared to make him
the likely nominee. But the tight races in those Democratic contests made it
clear that McCain and the Republicans must be ready to face Clinton, too.
Top McCain strategists believe the ongoing fight between Obama and Clinton
will give them time to raise money, develop their strategy and define their
candidate to a national audience before a full assault by Democrats. McCain
has already begun to paint both potential rivals as dangerous liberals.
"Either candidate, either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama, we will have
stark differences. They are liberal Democrats. I am a conservative Republican,"
he told an audience in Texas.
During the day, McCain talked about the themes he hopes will drive the fall
campaign. Mentioning the economy briefly and defending free trade, he quickly
moved on to national security, the issue he considers his greatest strength
against the eventual Democratic nominee.
Three times, he referred to "transcendent radical Islamic extremism."
But in his speech last night, he also sought to reach out, thanking "independent-thinking
Democrats" and pledging a campaign that does not descend into "an
uncivil brawl over the spoils of power."
"The contest begins tonight," he said, promising to seek "a
government that is as capable, wise, brave and decent as the great people we
serve."
--------
Slevin reported from the McCain campaign in Texas.
Go to Original
Sour Notes on Social Security
By Isaiah J. Poole
Campaign for America's Future
Tuesday 04 March 2008
Like an "American Idol" reject, John McCain keeps warbling George
W.
Bush's greatest flops.
The latest is Social Security privatization, a proposal so roundly
rejected by the American people when Bush tried to foist it on the
nation in 2005 that even a solidly Republican and sycophant Congress
couldn't swallow it.
But the Arizona Republican senator can't let it go. In an interview
with The Wall Street Journal this week, McCain said that he would, if
president, seek to implement "private savings accounts ... along the
lines that President Bush proposed."
His words to the Journal are mirrored on his website, which says,
"John McCain supports supplementing the current Social Security system
with personal accounts - but not as a substitute for addressing
benefit promises that cannot be kept."
The ominous phrase after the "but" is not-so-thinly-veiled code for
benefit cuts. Under McCain, you'll have to work longer before you
retire and get a smaller benefit when you do. Your check will be
designed not to keep up with inflation, as Social Security does now,
so that as you age, you will continue to fall behind as expenses rise.
Meanwhile, you will have to take some percentage of your money that
would have gone into the Social Security trust fund and invest it in
the stock market. You will have to navigate a dizzying array of
options presented by brokers hungry to claim a slice of your personal
account for their wallet. And then you will have to pray that you made
a wise choice. If you didn't, or if you ended up being taken to the
cleaners in an Enron-style rip-off, well, tough.
This is the social insecurity that John McCain offers to senior
citizens. And this man is not being laughed off the presidential
stage?
As Roger Hickey, a co-director here at the Campaign for America's
Future and one of the leaders responsible for derailing the 2005
privatization scheme, put it:
Amazing! John McCain embraces the idea that made
George W. Bush a lame duck! Clearly McCain learned nothing from George
W. Bush's failed attempt to privatize Social Security. Over the past
four years, Bush tried hard to achieve the holy grail of right-wing
ideologues: dismantling our most important retirement system and
putting part of people's contribution in the stock market. And the
American people said NO, resoundingly. The fact that McCain is willing
to campaign on this dangerous and elitist privatization
proposition-even as the economy and stock market goes into a dive-
shows that McCain is more concerned about right wing priorities (and
Wall Street dreams) than with securing retirement security for the
American people.
McCain wants to convince the public that he is going to take on a
tough political challenge that no one else has been able to solve. If
he was really all that politically macho, he would take the advice
from a number of experts who have concluded that Social Security will
remain solvent at current levels for at least another 40 years and
will be solvent indefinitely through some relatively modest steps,
such as simply raising the cap on the amount of earned income subject
to Social Security taxes.
The problem is not that people don't have private options for
investing in their retirement-the millions of dollars worth of ads on
television, print publications and the Internet hawking all manner of
IRAs and 401(k)s testify to that-but it is that politicians have
bought into one more Big Conservative Lie. The public saw through it
in 2005 and said that the bedrock of our retirement should continue to
rest on a platform of shared responsibility, not on a Wall Street
gamble in which the house is the only assured winner. That same aware
and mobilized public will deliver that same bit of "straight talk"
that will sideswipe any bus that tries to take that privatization road
again.
-------
Jump to today's Truthout Features:
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.
Print This Story
E-mail This Story