John McCain: A Profile in Moral Cowardice
Wow. McCain votes against banning the CIA from using torture. Thank god Andrew Sullivan calls MCain on his moral failure, although I think he is still giving McCain too much credit:
Maybe McCain is waiting to take on the forces of Rove and the electoral advantages of appealing to crude, fascistic templates of “torture-them-or-we-all-die” variety. But McCain should know that when dealing with unscrupulous thugs, appeasement is not the best policy. He’s the nominee. He needs to remind people that conservatism can be - must be - a decent political philosophy, that upholds, rather than trashes, the deepest moral traditions of the United States.
But hey — who can blame him? It’s one thing to be against torture in a primary debate where you’re trying to appeal to independents and crossover voters, but it’s quite another thing to be against torture after you’ve won the nomination and need to appease a conservative base that’s righteously pissed off and not afraid to let you know it. A base that Joe Klein watched in action last November when McCain told Mitt Romney, “We’re not going to torture people. We’re not going to do what Pol Pot did. We’re not going to do what’s being done to Burmese monks as we speak”
The Romney endorsement makes more sense now.
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