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| Via BusinessInsider |
Sens. Lindsey Graham (SC) and John McCain (AZ)
This was a closer race at the finish than I expected when Speaker Boehner recently vented at the Tea Party and his libertarian/conservative colleagues (like Justin Amash) over the Ryan-Murray budget deal. It was a puzzling move on his part; I had to sit through Sunday talk soup and stew while self-important "progressive" pundits trumpeted his validation of their straw man smear on the groups, only wondering why it rook him so long to come to his senses: too little, too late. I have a pragmatic streak, and I know trying to deal with spendthrifts like Harry Reid and Barry Obama is like pulling teeth--I don't have unrealistic expectations. I know Boehner has a responsibility under divided government to do as best as he can with the poor hand he has been dealt. However, lashing out at his allies is politically clueless; the enthusiasm in the base is not with the moderates, your grandfather's GOP; businesses, unnerved by the recent shutdown exacerbating regime uncertainty, may prefer more pragmatic legislators, but they are fighting an uphill battle. It's bad enough I go onto Facebook and come across threads and individual comments and see the GOP described as essentially the same as the Dems on spending, policy issues, etc. It's not true, of course, but the Dems will exploit populist backlash over spending cuts; that was seen most clearly in Romney's battle against Big Bird last year.
But my inaugural award for Republicans behaving badly has to be the Neo-Con Dynamic Duo. What's odd is that my worldview has changed over the past 5 years. McCain and Graham are pragmatic, part of the infamous Gang of 14 which managed to defuse the original "nuclear option" kerfuffle over the use of the filibuster by the Dem Senate minority. The Dems had fired the first shots in the partisan war with a bitterly personal/ideological attack on the late Robert Bork's SCOTUS nomination, later followed up with more of the same on Clarence Thomas. (As the familiar reader knows, I left the Democratic Party over the Bork sabotage.) Bush had a bipartisanship record in Texas, but any chance of trying to bridge the partisan divide was gone perhaps from the start given the controversial Florida election. McCain during the 2000 campaign had developed a fusion populist, straight talk, maverick, bipartisan reputation, What sold me on McCain for the 2008 campaign was his criticisms of the Bush Administration's Iraq strategy and his prescient backing of Petraeus' counter-insurgency strategy, which I thought set up our successful exit from Iraq.
It's difficult to know when I finally broke the weak neo-con hold on me. There were a number of converging aspects. First, Woodward's book The War Within led me to question Bush's conduct of the occupation over and beyond the utter incompetence of post-invasion administrative and military policy. I didn't underestimate the difficulty of leaving Iraq without a potential region war based on sectarian strife. Second, I never was sold in our involvement in Afghanistan; I understand that the Taliban had refused to turn over UBL, but I also knew the history of occupation in Afghanistan, particularly the failed Soviet effort--and the Soviet Union wasn't fighting a foe halfway around the world. When Obama dithered and finally came up with what I considered a politically nuanced decision of high-risk/low-manpower for the surge decision and announced a withdrawal schedule in advance of boots on the ground, I was done with it. It was bad enough we were in Afghanistan; I thought it's one thing to keep the military on a short leash if objectives aren't being met (a problem I had with Bush's management: he waited until after the disastrous 2006 mid-term forced his hand), but micromanaging the military or tailoring a policy for political objectives. If you have to fight a war, give the generals the resources and authority they need to win. Probably the final straw was the corrupt elections. (My positions against interventionist policy hardened with increased reading on past wars, Eisenhower's critique of the military-industrial complex, and a more consistent government spending critique.)
Most of my criticisms are aimed at John McCain, whom has been notably snarky on the young Tea Party guns, like Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz (Graham also was contemptuous of the efforts to shutdown ObamaCare--although to be fair both McCain and Graham voted against ObamaCare to begin with). But McCain and Graham have consistently taken a hardline neo-con position on drones, Iran, Libya and Syria.
