Unbelievable. Sen. John McCain — who just weeks ago said of the Climate Security Act, "I hope it will pass, and I hope the entire Congress will join in supporting it and the President of the United States would sign it" — now says he won’t show up to vote on it.
He won’t vote against it, mind you. Won’t go on record. Won’t take a stand. He just won’t show.
“I have not been there for a number of votes. The same thing happened in the campaign of 2000,” he said. “The people of Arizona understand I’m running for president.”
Pardon my French, but that’s just chickenshit. Not to mention bullshit: in a crucial vote earlier this Congressional session that would have transferred oil company subsidies to renewable energy, McCain was actually in D.C. — he sat on his plane while the vote was taken. (The measure failed by one vote.)
He won’t support concrete proposals to reduce greenhouse gases or boost renewable energy, but he’s too cowardly to go on record voting against them, since it might put the lie to all his lofty maverick rhetoric on climate.
You think Republicans for Environmental Protection will give him a pass on this one too?
And while I’m ranting: The reason McCain opposes Lieberman-Warner is that it doesn’t contain sufficient pork for the nuclear industry. But when he’s in Nevada, pandering to Nevada voters who hate the idea of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, he tells a different story. Heck, we might not even need Yucca, he says!
This is a guy who wants the U.S. to build on the order of 700 new nuclear plants, telling Nevada voters that we won’t need a place to store all the waste.
How on earth did this guy get a reputation as a straight talker? Can you imagine this kind of evasion and double-talk being accepted from any other national candidate?
