@Foxfyre,
Foxfyre wrote:
I have looked it up Nimh
Is that in response to me telling you to look up the voting records? If you had really looked it up, you would have found that yes, there are in fact several other Republican Senators, alone - not even mentioning US Representatives - who have "opposed GWB in the execution of the policies more" than McCain.
Because no, this is not just a question of "my opinion [being] as good as yours". This is checkable fact stuff. The Congressional Quarterly maintains a "presidential support score", measuring "how frequently senators have supported President Bush during roll-call votes" every year.
For example,
here's the scores for Senators in 2005 and 2006.
2005 was,of course, when McCain was still in full-on maverick mode; before he started flip-flopping on every issue that had the potential of stopping conservatives from supporting his new presidential candidacy. And yet even that year he was not the most vocal opponent of GWB when push came to shove, and more than just talk was required. When it came to actually voting on stuff, McCain voted with Bush 77% of the time. That was more than Mike DeWine (76%), and significantly more than Olympia Snowe (67%), Susan Collins (62%) and Linc Chafee (56%).
In
2006, McCain moved much further into lockstep with Bush's policies - and that's already two years ago. He voted with Bush 88% of the time. That was more than Orrin Hatch, Lisa Murkowski, Michael Crapo, John Thune, David Vitter, Trent Lott, Conrad Burns, Richard Shelby, Gordon Smith, Jim Talent, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Arlen Specter, and again Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Lincoln Chafee.
And again, that's just the Senate. You wrote that "McCain has opposed GWB in the execution of the policies more than any other member of the GOP delegation in Congress." So
what about the House? Well, when push came to shove and he had to vote on things, he opposed GWB less than - get this - 39 Republican US Representatives in 2005 -- and less than 68 Republican US Representatives in 2006.
Since then, of course, McCain has moved even more in line with Bush.
"An Early Look at 2008 Vote Scores" on the CQ site teaches us that this year, John McCain's "presidential support score" is a baffling 100% - higher than any other Republican Senator's. In the House, too, not a single other Republican gets 100%.
I'd give McCain something of a pass on that though - he was out campaigning most of the year, so he probably simply attended very few votes. So all that shows is that he apparently only showed up for votes on which he was in agreement with Bush. Telling in itself, but not a complete judgement, then.
So instead, let's look at the complete picture. CQ also conducted "a study of all roll-call votes during the seven-and-a-half years of President Bush's two terms " up to Congress' August recess." It rightly beats its own drum when explaining that "it is a first-ever look at the way lawmakers voted over an entire presidency," with a "searchable table [that] shows both party unity and presidential support scores over the entire Bush presidency for individual lawmakers who are currently serving in the 110th Congress." Great resource. So how does your assertion that "McCain has opposed GWB in the execution of the policies more than any other member of the GOP delegation in Congress" withstand the fact check
when we look at the full length of Bush's presidency?
It doesn't. During the full eight years, McCain voted in accordance with Bush's preference 90% of the time (this is where those Obama ads get that number). Were there more critical Senators? Hell yeah. Even just looking at the ones that are still in the Senate now, there's no less than 25 of 'em. The Senators who opposed Bush most are in fact Snowe, Collins, Specter and Bob Corker - all with presidential support scores of under 80%. Meaning that all of them opposed Bush more than twice as frequently as McCain. And again, that's just the Senate. In the House there are currently 69 Representatives who have voted against Bush's will
more than twice as frequently as McCain did.
You cant just make up stuff from thin air, Fox, and then when challenged to look up the facts say, well, my opinion is as good as yours. Not when you state things as facts that are demonstrably false. Not when you say things that can be checked. I told you to look up the voting records. You said you did. Were you bluffing?
The same goes for the other argument you respond to here. You asserted that "the problem has never been Bush policies. The problem has been incompetence in administraton and carrying out of those policies. It was that, not the policies themselves, that got GWB into trouble." I responded that that's not what the polls show - they show that it's many of the policies themselves that are impopular.
That's a specific argument. So the polls also "suggest that .. a majority .. aren't buying the "McSame" tag", you say. And? How's that refute the argument? It's a simple question: has the problem never been Bush policies, and did he only get into trouble by not carrying them out well - or were many of his policies themselves impopular? I'm not going through the same work of looking up the data as above, but again, this is not just a question of "my opinion being as good as yours". This is stuff that can be looked up. It's checkable.
