Is It Finally John McCain's America?
By Jeffrey Goldberg
a
A
Senator John McCain, one of the last non-anguished interventionists in Washington (his Sancho Panza, fellow Republican Lindsey Graham, is another), had a very good last week.
He watched President Barack Obama decide to drop bombs on Syria, a policy McCain has long endorsed. He saw the non-interventionist wing of his party suddenly revise its views when it came under pressure from Middle East reality. He played polar bear to ex-White House flack Jay Carney’s baby seal on CNN.
When I met with McCain in his Senate office on Wednesday, I asked him about his colleague, Senator Rand Paul, who lately has been arguing that he himself is not, in fact, an isolationist. Paul is McCain's main intraparty nemesis (of the moment, at least), and McCain’s lip curled when I brought up his name. “Rand Paul now wants to take out ISIS,” he said, referring to the Islamic State terror group the U.S. is now targeting. “Way to go, Rand, way to go!”
Paul’s endorsement of an anti-Islamic State campaign was not prompted by heartfelt shock at the beheading of two American journalists, McCain claimed. “It doesn’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing,” he said, channeling a singer I didn’t think he knew existed. “He’s saying this because he’s running for president. That’s why he’s saying it.”
It is true that the winds have shifted since the American people were made aware of the bottomless depravity of Islamic State. According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released this week, more than 60 percent of respondents believe that Islamic State poses a national security threat to the U.S. Three-quarters said action against Islamic State should consist of at least air strikes, and 34 percent said they would support the use of ground troops as well. This last number is particularly shocking, given the anti-interventionist mood that has settled over the country during the Barack Obama era.
MORE...
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-14/is-it-finally-john-mccain-s-america
= new reply since forum marked as read
