But this isn’t
How nice of the guy who sang about bombing Iran to snatch the mic away from a crazy person that would’ve made him look bad if he had agreed. This was back when republicans had to keep up appearances of decorum. His policies were still along the same lines as trump (and as bush before him).
John McCain never saw a war that he didn’t want Americans fighting and dying in.
Or a bank not worth bailing out.
I’m sorry, how many bombers did you personally stop from bombing children in Laos?
None? Oh, you didn’t even take an aircraft carrier out of commission during the vietnam war?
Edit: In case somebody didn’t get the joke, Mccaine was a terrible pilot who crashed 2 planes and was involved in an incident that took a carrier out of commission and killed almost 200 soldier.
There’s not a lot of people who directly did as much to slow the American war machine as Mccaine’s incompetence.
a crazy person that would’ve made him look bad if he had agreed
The bitter truth was that McCain’s political instincts sucked. He should have doubled down and gone with the crazy, rather than trying to play at respectability politics and wait to sabotage Obamacare from the cloak room of the Senate. His base didn’t want to hear about how Obama’s plan was a moderate reform to shore up a broken private system. They wanted to hear that the scary black man was going to kill whitey.
His policies were still along the same lines as trump (and as bush before him).
McCain took a full 180 on a litany of policies - climate change, health care, immigration, balancing the budget - the moment Obama stepped into the White House. But that’s SOP for “moderate” Republican congressmen. Spend 20 years going to Think Tanks, agreeing with everyone, and saying you’re going to deliver reform. Then torch a mountain of legislation because your rival hurt your feelings when he didn’t let you win.
Im a fairly progressive person.
When he ran I was totally going to vote for him.
Then he chose Palin as his VP. Not because she’s a woman. I thought that was dope. It was when she spoke. Bridge to nowhere bs totally ruined him.
McCain
Yeah but also the reliance on ‘norms’ is part of the problem.
We relied on the ‘norm’ of R v W when no law was on the books stating otherwise.
We’re relying on the ‘norm’ of a 2 term president when no law is on the books stating otherwise.
We need to actually codify norms into something enforceable if we want them to have real meaning. Otherwise they are just opinions.
when no law is on the books stating otherwise
There actually is one (even a constitutional amendment). It was introduced after Franklin D Roosevelt’s served a third and a fourth term.
That’s part of what makes Trump’s talk of a 3rd term both ridiculous and terrifying. It would violate the Constitution, so a radical change to our country would have to happen for that to happen. All of our “inalienable rights” are guaranteed by the Constitution, so if they throw it away for a 3rd Trump term, they can throw it away for anything else they want. Want to go back to only white men who own land voting? It’s the Constitution blocking that. Making treason a crime? The Constitution. Once they break that, we’re hosed.
They’re already throwing out the Constitution. Fourteenth amendment says he’s ineligible to be president because of the insurrection.
That should have been a slam dunk impeachment conviction. That the discussion even gets to the 14th makes me weep for the country I thought I grew up in.
This isn’t new at all, so if anything ignoring the 22nd is just furthering the current trajectory of decline imo. What happened to our “inalienable right” to privacy, supposedly guaranteed by the 4th amendment, after 9/11 and the ensuing bipartisan surveillance bill known as the Patriot Act?
It would violate the Constitution
Hardly the first time we’ve done that in this country.
From a game theory perspective, it is impossible to create a system that is immune to bad faith actors. They will always find cracks to squeeze through. The people within the system have to proactively police against bad faith actors.
You can make a system thats immune- you just have to make they pay offs force a better result than being self interested. The mafia broke the prisoners dilemma by killing everyone that confessed - we should apply the same and execute Trump for attempting to breach the constitution for his own self interest. See how many people try again.
The mafia is not famous for being able to provide a stable environment which is safe for the people within it who follow the rules and can scale up to hundreds of millions of people while keeping everything relatively safe and reasonable
“We’ll just kill everyone who threatens us” is a tempting solution for a government that is under threat, but the historical examples of that strategy playing out well for anyone even over the short term are few and far between, even when it seemed pretty justified at the time
You’re right they aren’t, I was using it as an example. I’m not fully versed in UCMJ (think thats the right one) but as ex commander in chief Trump is a part of the armed forces, and the penalty for Treason is execution. Not asking a new law to come out, only a reminder that we have laws, and no one is above them.
Then the bad faith actors will just exploit that system to kill people they want dead.
I just want as time where election results were respected and transfer of power came without violence.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/19/trump-campaign-election-monitoring-00153217
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-rnc-vote-monitor-election-integrity-rcna148557
They will delay certification of results where they can. They will do everything to steal this election.
He also gave us Palin, the precursor of brain dead politicians.
Ever heard of Michelle Bachmann? Newt Gingrich? Mike Huckabee?
Palin wasn’t any kind of precursor. She was right in the center of the pack.
In that election I actually liked/wanted McCain, and this was one of the highlights for me (looking back, rose-tinted I’m sure).
It showed that McCain was still an honest person (comparatively), and had integrity/ethics.
I liked McCain as well, until he picked Palin. On that day I changed my party affiliation from R to I because I knew there was no room under the big tent for a person like me.
Why do you need a party affiliation? Why not just vote as you see fit at the time of voting (i know I’m the weird one but i still don’t understand this after 40 years)
The biggest reason for most people is for closed primaries, which vary from state to state. During a closed primary or caucus, only voters registered with that party can take part and vote.
Oh i see. I dont have that here. Thanks. But also that seems weirdly invasive
McCain is almost single-handedly responsible for helping birth the tea party in that election. He made an alliance with the growing far right (still without the official name “the tea psrty” at that point in time, but undoubtedly connected) to win the election, and they grew in power since then. Yeah, a big part of their rise was Obama being Black. But another huge piece to that puzzle was McCain making Palin his running mate.
Me too. Then he absolutely lost me after Palin. What an idiot of a person. She can see Russia from her house?!?!
