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McCain, and Neoconservatism

Again, inspired by The Econ­o­mist.

John McCain (R‑Arizona) is an often-named front-run­ner for the Repub­li­can Par­ty in 2008. He is called out as a “mav­er­ick” by most hard­line Repub­li­cans, but in what I can only call an amus­ing twist of real­i­ty, he is clos­er to the orig­i­nal par­ty line than any­one has been in the past five years.

McCain stands for the con­ser­v­a­tivism that many are miss­ing today. Small gov­ern­ment, strong defense, cut­backs on gov­ern­ment spend­ing (Sen. Stevens: that means you, Mr. Bridge to Nowhere). He believes that stem cell research should be allowed (no unnec­es­sary gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion), thinks glob­al warm­ing is an issue (not will­ing to ignore the envi­ron­ment in favor of fos­sil fuel based business).

To sum it up:

He is a dif­fer­ent kind of Republican—part sun­belt con­ser­v­a­tive (who believes in lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment), and part Ted­dy Roo­sevelt Repub­li­can (who believes in using the pow­er of the state to solve press­ing prob­lems such as grow­ing inequal­i­ty and glob­al warming).

If he’s up in 2008, he will absolute­ly, with­out a doubt, get my vote. He’s shown, time and again, that his prin­ci­ples will remain uncom­pro­mised despite crit­i­cism and risk of being a minor­i­ty or a shunned outcast.