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by Patrick J. Buchanan

The American Conservative Magazine

Offering more “straight talk” on the Sunday before the Florida primary, John McCain made an arresting prediction: “It’s a tough war we’re in. It’s not going to be over right away. There’s going to be other wars. I’m sorry to tell you, there’s going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars.”

Ike promised to “go to Korea” and ended that war. Nixon pledged to end Vietnam with honor. McCain says we may be in Iraq a hundred years and warns, “there’s going to be other wars.” Take the man at his word.

Mimicking the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann,” McCain has joked about “Bomb, bomb, bomb—bomb, bomb Iran” and urged the expulsion of Russia from the G-8. He wants to expand NATO to bring in Georgia and the Ukraine. This could mean confrontation between Russia and the United States over whether South Ossetia and Abkhazia should be free of Georgia or ruled by Tbilisi, a matter of zero vital interest to this country.

We are forewarned. John McCain intends to be a war president.

Where Bush has lately cleansed his administration of neocons, McCain offers the last best hope for a neocon return and restoration and more wars in the Middle East. And if, as seems probable, Bibi Netanyahu again becomes prime minister of Israel, he and a President McCain will find a pretext for war on Iran.

Year 2008 may prove a defining one for conservatives. For on many of the great issues, McCain has sided as often with the Left and the Big Media as he has with the Right.

Where Bush has been at his best, cutting taxes and nominating conservative judges, McCain has been his nemesis. Not only did he vote twice against the Bush tax cuts, McCain colluded to sell out the most conservative of Bush’s judges

In 1993, McCain voted to confirm the pro-abortion liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But when Bush set out to restore constitutionalism, McCain formed the Gang of 14, seven senators from each party. All agreed to vote to block the GOP Senate from invoking the “nuclear option”—i.e., empowering the GOP to break a filibuster of judicial nominees by majority vote—unless the seven Democrats agreed.

With this record of voting for Clinton justices and joining with Democrats anxious to kill the most conservative Bush’s nominees, what guarantee is there a President McCain would nominate and fight for the fifth jurist who would vote to overturn Roe v Wade?

McCain also colluded with liberals to pass McCain-Feingold, a law that denies to Second Amendment folks and right-to-lifers their First Amendment right to identify friends and foes in TV ads before national elections.

On ANWAR, too, McCain votes with the liberals, and on global warming he has moved toward Gore.

After five record trade deficits have denuded the nation of thousands of factories and 3 million manufacturing jobs, McCain is still babbling on about Smoot-Hawley. “When you study history,” he told a Detroit newspaper, “every time we’ve adopted protectionism, we’ve paid a very heavy price.”

But what history was McCain talking about? From Lincoln through Calvin Coolidge, the GOP was the Party of Protection that put 12 presidents in the White House to two for the Democrats, and the U.S. became the most awesome industrial power and self-reliant nation in the history of mankind, producing 42 percent of the world’s manufactured goods. Even Hillary, whose husband passed NAFTA with McCain’s support, has begun to question the free-trade paradigm and the disastrous results it has produced.

On controlling America’s borders and halting the invasion through Mexico, McCain collaborated with Senate liberals in the McCain-Kennedy amnesty, which was rejected only after a national uprising.

When 190,000 Arizonans petitioned in 2004 to put Prop 200 on the ballot, requiring proof of citizenship before an individual could vote or receive welfare benefits, John McCain led the GOP congressional delegation in opposing it unanimously. Prop 200 passed with the support of 56 percent of all Arizona voters and 46 percent of Hispanics.

Unsurprisingly, Juan Hernandez, the open-borders chatterbox and former adviser to Vicente Fox, has turned up in McCain’s campaign.

On the two issues where Bush has been at his best, taxes and judges, McCain has sided against him. On the three issues that have ravaged the Bush presidency—the misbegotten war in Iraq, the failure to secure America’s borders, and the trade policy that has destroyed the dollar, de-industrialized the country, and left foreigners with $5 trillion to buy up America—McCain has sided with Bush.

Now McCain is running on a platform that says your jobs are not coming back, the illegals are not going home, but we are going to have more wars. If you don’t like it, vote for Hillary.

And this was to be the Year of Change.

SOURCE: The American Conservative Magazine