Bush/McCain lunch today

Photo from Associated Press

From Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire;

Perino said Bush thanked the former candidates for setting a good tone for the race and raising interest in the Republican field. She said Bush has a “very favorable view” of McCain and plans to campaign on his behalf. “President Bush has never forgotten how hard Sen. McCain worked to re-elect him in 2004,” Perino said.

Still, the men fought bitterly for the Republican nomination in 2000 and have disagreed on a number of high-profile issues, including the administration’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, climate change and interrogation tactics used in the war on terror.

“I’m not going to argue that they haven’t had their disagreements,” Perino said, noting that they agree on basic national security principles and the need for “pro-growth” economic policies.

We all remember the bitter Bush vs. McCain campaigns in 2000. John McCain lost me as a supporter when in South Carolina he called the proposed Bush tax-cuts “tax cuts for the rich”. True to his character, John McCain continued to oppose President George W. Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. But John McCain stood by the President in the 2004 campaign against John Kerry and he’s stood by the President on nearly every aspect of the war against terror.

John McCain has disappointed nearly every Conservative at some point in his career, as I’ve written already, I include myself in that number. I’ve read through out the Conservative blogs how “we’re screwed” because John McCain is our candidate. Some have said that they’ll support Hillary or Obama before they’d vote for McCain. Many people I otherwise respect and admire have declared that they’ll stay home before they vote for John McCain – I probably said the same thing about your candidate at some point, too.

Well, that’s just silly, actually. It’s called cutting off your nose to spite your face. No candidate can be completely everything every voter wants. John McCain has an 80% conservative rating compared to two candidates that have 98% leftist ratings. Four years or even two years of Democrats on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue could impact this country in ways that we’ll never be able to repair.

Jimmy Carter walked the length of Pennsylvania Avenue as every President before him had – after four years of Jimmy Carter’s weak-kneed foreign policy, no President has been able to make that one-mile walk safely since.

We have an extraordinary advantage here. Given that we’re battling against the media as well as the Democrats here, we need every advantage we can grasp. While Clinton and Obama are still battering each other with verbal sledgehammers and dirty politics (as illustrated by Invincible Armor), John McCain can stay above it all and get his message out – our message.

To borrow a quote from my battle buddy Crotchety Old Bastard; I love my country more than I dislike John McCain.

If President Bush and Senator McCain can set aside their differences for the party and the country, so should we.

Back to the Washington Wire;

Awaiting McCain, who was scheduled to arrive at noon, Bush walked out on the White House’s North Portico at around 11:35 a.m. After joking with reporters and performing an impromptu dance similar to his footwork in Ghana last month, the president returned to the White House only to reappear a moment later as McCain’s Cadillac pulled into the driveway.

Category: Bloggers, John McCain/Sarah Palin, Politics, Society