Various conservatives have attacked John McCain as if he were a tax-and-spend liberal economically. Nothing is further from the truth as Ken Stach proved beyond serious doubt in today’s Wall Street Journal.

You can certainly disagree with the Reagan-McCain approach to taxes, and many fine godly people do. Different views of the role of government in economic matters is an open debate that we ought to be able to have in this country. I think we will have it before November and if Obama is the nominee I think it will not turn into a bitter partisan debate. I, for one, welcome this honest discussion about how government should act with regard to monetary policy and budgeting. I believe this election will thus be one that will allow us to have a real debate about this subject.

Hcgl291_mccain_20080109223036_2
But if you do not like John McCain, and I still respect you if you do not, please do not spread the lies that Senator McCain is a liberal on economic issues because he opposed President Bush, the stronger conservative on this issue. (It is Bush, after all, who spent wildly and never vetoed the immense overspending of the last seven years in Congress!) The record, as Stach will show you clearly, is quite different than the way the Senator has been represented by the far right attack dogs on their talk shows; e.g. Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, etc. (I stopped listening to all these people two weeks ago. I am back to NPR, even with its own bias. I only listen in my car anyway. I have found NPR, or even silence, to be preferred to the entertainment industry that is called conservative talk radio. To my mind these talkers are no more credible than kindergarten students when it comes to serious political discourse.)

I wondered to myself, just a four weeks ago, "Why do Phil Gramm and Jack Kemp, two of the most consistent supply-side thinkers of the Reagan coalition, endorse McCain if he is such a political heretic on taxation and budget related issues?" This article answered my questions totally and completely. If you care about these kinds of issues then read this article and see for yourself. Disagree with McCain or Obama if you will but please let us have a really honest discussion of the big issues between now and November. I say again, I think we have a better chance of this happening than we’ve had in nearly thirty years. The sharp divergence in the respective views of the role of government between John McCain and Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton, who might still rally but I would not bet a dime on it), are stark and easy to see if you try to get into this subject with your mind. McCain is not puffing himself up when he says, "I was a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution." He really was and the evidence is quite clear.

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Comments

  1. ColtsFan February 14, 2008 at 9:35 pm

    I, mostly, agree with JA post here.
    Personally, I will not be voting for McCain in November because I disagree with his amnesty position on illegal immigration, which is contrary to the purpose of government described in Romans 13.
    But I do agree that McCain is a “conservative”, for the most part, on fiscal and monetary policies. For an additional helpful commentary, see below:
    http://hotair.com/archives/2008/02/14/tax-cuttin-mac/

  2. Pilgrim February 15, 2008 at 9:30 am

    With ColtsFan, McCain really worries me with his apparent contempt for the very notion of national borders and sovereignty.
    With JA I’ve turned off the big names in talk radio.
    There is a guy named Jan Mickelson who’s been doing GREAT talk radio on Iowa’s largest talk station for many years. All his shows are free to download or listen to live:
    http://mickelson.libsyn.com/
    He combines a presuppositional approach to public discourse with the conversational style that attracts me to NPR and a healthy measure of levity.

  3. Nathan Petty February 18, 2008 at 9:50 am

    I agree with John’s analysis. I do find the two responses interesting.
    As a conservative who lives in an area which has a very high historic level of illegal immigration (due to agriculture) I have heard a lot of rhetoric on the issue.
    I sympathize with those who would not vote for a candidate because of a single issue, in this case illegal immigration. I used to be such a voter on the issue of abortion.
    I changed my mind on this when confronting the prospect of withholding my vote from Guliani (remember him?) because of his stance on abortion. I decided in the end that he would still nominate justices far more to my liking than any Democratic candidate. I would have voted for Guliani.
    It seems like for some folks illegal immigration has supplanted abortion (or been added to their list) as the litmus test for their support. I’m not second guessing the first two responders to this post, but this issue does make me think about what is really important to me.
    For me, illiegal immigration is less important than human life. But what if illegal immigration affected my income? Now that would be a real test of my convictions!

  4. ColtsFan April 17, 2008 at 1:48 am

    My purpose on this economics thread is to point out the benefits of reading this excellent Economics book below:
    http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208413676&sr=1-1
    Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics
    Author:
    by Henry Hazlitt
    I have really learned a great deal. I highly recommend this book!!

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