He's a conservative! Congratulations to the AP for actually printing it, despite making sure he gets his favorite donuts. What we on the left have known since McCain was making himself present on the stage of the U.S. Senate many years ago, the AP is starting to catch on. Instead of going along with the "maverick" crap that so many in the media have, they actually (gasp) looked at his record and found that the so-called moderate is much more to the right than McCain's friends in the media let on.
From The AP/Huff Po:
The likely Republican presidential nominee is much more conservative than voters appear to realize. McCain leans to the right on issue after issue, not just on the Iraq war but also on abortion, gay rights, gun control and other issues that matter to his party's social conservatives.
The four-term Arizona senator, a longtime member of the Armed Services Committee, criticized the earlier handling of the war but has been a crucial ally in President Bush's effort to increase and maintain U.S. forces in Iraq.
Besides the war, McCain agrees broadly with Bush and other conservatives on:
_Abortion.[...]
_Gay rights.[...]
_Gun control. [...]
His conservatism could be a problem for McCain _ particularly if this November's contest is as close as recent presidential elections, which were decided by independent-minded voters in the center of the political spectrum.
But he might avoid this problem to the extent people know him as an independent-minded politician. And many do view him that way.
"People see him as a centrist. They don't see him as a conservative," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
People see him as that because the media hasn't been doing their job, but if the rest of the "journalists" out there would report on McCain's record and issue positions instead of eating ribs at the ranch in Arizona, maybe Americans would see the "Maverick" for who he really is. Despite this one article however, most coverage of the Senator is extremely favorable. That is why I won't be holding my breath for the traditional media outlets to do their job, so the blogosphere will continue to do theirs.
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