Why Not McCain #1: The Supreme Court

Many democrats and left or moderate independents still remember the John McCain of 2000, the irascible rebellious Republican who was not frightened to say what he thought, even if it went against his own party. I liked him too. Two things:
1) He doesn't exist anymore - John McCain got close to being the presidential nominee in 2000 and made some big personal and moral compromises in order to ensure he had republican support to become the nominee in 2008 and
2) Even then, he still was VERY conservative on many core principles, and has become even moreso since. You might think you like him, but you might not be fully aware of where he stands on things, because you have the memory of that "maverick." (okay i used it, once, never again I swear!).

Many say to me "Well, McCain wouldn't be that bad, he'd be better than Bush." Firstly, I think this is setting the bar pretty damn low. But additionally, we can't afford another Republican term with NO major change in direction from the failed policies of the last 8 years.  So this will be the first in a series of posts looking at some of McCain's policies, beliefs, and history, to let you know why McCain WOULD be that bad, and why it is so important that the Democrats, and Barack Obama, win this election.

Reason #1: The Supreme Court. At least two justices could retire during the next president's term, with the possibility of tipping the balance of the court entirely to the conservative side - and McCain is for repealing Roe v. Wade. Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker takes a close look at the coded language in McCain's judiciary policy speech, and finds that he is using cloudy language to mask the bones he is throwing to the extreme right of his party.

The question, as always with McCain these days, is whether he means it. Might he really be a “maverick” when it comes to the Supreme Court? The answer, almost certainly, is no. The Senator has long touted his opposition to Roe, and has voted for every one of Bush’s judicial appointments; the rhetoric of his speech shows that he is getting his advice on the Court from the most extreme elements of the conservative movement...

And a reminder of what Bush's court has already wrought:

...in just three years the Roberts Court has crippled school-desegregation efforts (and hinted that affirmative action may be next); approved a federal law that bans a form of abortion; limited the reach of job-discrimination laws; and made it more difficult to challenge the mixing of church and state. It’s difficult to quarrel with Justice Stephen Breyer’s assessment of his new colleagues: “It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much.” And more change is likely to come. John Paul Stevens, the leader of the Court’s four embattled liberals, just celebrated his eighty-eighth birthday; Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seventy-five; David Souter is only sixty-eight but longs for his home in New Hampshire. For all the elisions in John McCain’s speech, one unmistakable truth emerged: that the stakes in the election, for the Supreme Court and all who live by its rulings, are very, very high.