Next Stop For The Straight Talk Express: Hateville
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Despite the staunch support for gay and lesbian rights that somehow must be lurking behind his relentlessly reactionary voting record, John McCain reasserts his determination to deploy counter-majoritarian tactics to ensure that that the highly unpopular and morally indefensible exclusion of gays and lesbians from the military:
When asked how far he would go to prevent an attempt to repeal the controversial policy from being approved in the upper congressional chamber, McCain responded by saying, “Absolutely I will filibuster or stop it from being brought up until we have a thorough and complete study on the effect of morale and battle effectiveness.”
The longtime senator said that it doesn’t matter to him that Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen have both voiced support for stopping the enforcement of the ban on gay troops.
However, back in 2006 McCain communicated a distinctly different stance on the issue when he said, “The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy,’ then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it.”
It should be added at this point that the primary is over. In some sense, seeing McCain as merely a hack politician (while certainly an improvement from the utterly embarrassing fawning-over he received from the press for decades) is too charitable. While he’s certainly a ruthless hack, he also has an extensive history of endorsing appalling positions absent any actual political necessity.