Despite his claims of reaching across the aisle in the spirit of bipartisanship, former Republican presidential candidate and senior Arizona Senator John McCain sent an email to his supporters urging them to sign a petition against President Barack Obama's stimulus package. The petition appears on McCain's own fundraising website called "Country First," although it should more accurately be named "Republicans First" since its single goal seems to be fundraising to elect more Republicans.
McCain's email flirts with misinformation throughout its four paragraphs: giving a half nod to President Obama's attempts at Republican outreach ("I appreciate the discussions President Obama is having with my Republican colleagues") and then immediately throwing that nod away ("Republicans have not been given the opportunity to be involved"), and suggesting that Senate Democrats are either bullies ("In the Senate, the Democrat leadership is trying to jam the existing proposal through") or Joe Lieberman ("regardless of reservations from a number of members"). And in what might be its most galling line, McCain ignores the massive spending of the last eight years under Republican leadership ("Our country does not need just another spending bill, particularly not one that will load future generations with the burden of massive debt."). Really? And the war in Iraq did what exactly?
Of course McCain is up for re-election soon, and considering how close the presidential election was in his home state of Arizona he feels the need to start grandstanding, and grandstanding is something McCain can pull out of the hat like a well-trained bunny ("I have long been a fighter against wasteful spending in Washington and long an advocate for a balanced budget -- that will never change."). But as the economic news continues to worsen, one wonders at McCain's wisdom in sending an email short on new ideas ("payroll tax cuts") and strong on obstructionism (one particularly baffling sentence reads: "the time for talking has come to an end and we must now begin some serious negotiation.").
Maybe he'd be wiser to take advice from the one line in his email that makes sense:
With so much at stake, the last thing we need is partisanship driving our attempts to turn the economy around.