GOP, courts: Had enough? (McCain and Specter all talk, no action)

[ProSense]

ROBERT KUTTNER

GOP, courts: Had enough?

By Robert Kuttner | July 15, 2006

IS PRESIDENT BUSH'S effort to claim extra-constitutional powers as a wartime commander-in-chief finally being reined in by congressional Republicans and courts? Or will the Republican Congress and increasingly docile judges figure out ways to legalize Bush's extralegal incursions after the fact?

Snip...

At a hearing Thursday of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Republican senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina , who have criticized the administration's military tribunals, voiced support for using the preexisting Uniform Code of Military Justice instead as the basis for trying accused terrorists.

But McCain, like Specter, has a history of bold talk coupled with actions that help the administration when the chips are down. McCain and Bush were bitter rivals in the 2000 Republican primaries, when Karl Rove's operatives accused the senator of everything from mental instability to having fathered an illegitimate child. Now, however, we are seeing an improbable truce, because Bush and war hero McCain need each other.

McCain needs Bush's conservative base in his push for the 2008 nomination, and he has been delivering pandering speeches to the fundamentalist right that once disdained him. Press accounts suggest that Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney, in turn, seem to have concluded that McCain, liked by some independents and Democrats, is their best bet for the Republican right to hold power beyond 2008. With the exception of a few high-profile maverick actions, like the bipartisan McCain-Feingold Act limiting campaign contributions, and his expressed displeasure over abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, McCain votes like an ordinary right-winger. Ultimately, count on McCain to help Bush legalize extra-constitutional processing of detainees, with minimal reform and window-dressing.

Snip...

This victory for civil rights had less to do with a sudden Republican outbreak of conscience than with politics in the best sense -- Republican fear of voter retribution by an increasingly pluralist electorate. If Bush's despotic designs are thwarted, it will not be courtesy of vanishingly rare profiles in courage by Republican legislators or by bravely independent courts, but because the voters finally grasp the stakes.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/07/15/gop_courts_had_enough

[Master Mahon]

1. McCain

what do you expect from a guy who caved to the No. Vietnamese and spilled his guts after being held 3 DAYS as a POW!
Boy what a war hero he was!!!
And to think they bash Jane Fonda?