But this week, with President Barack Obama in the White House and McCain back in Congress, the Arizona senator has played a prominent and uncompromising role in rallying Republican opposition to the Democratic majority and its stimulus plan.
McCain's actions in the stimulus debate make for a very different leadership profile than he touted during the presidential campaign. His push for tax cuts as well as spending cuts, and his slashing, partisan rhetoric, are a far cry from his role a few years ago in leading a bipartisan coalition that sought compromise on how the Senate handles judicial nominations.
The Senate debate on the stimulus plan is only a few days old, but McCain's already demonstrating a distressing readiness to engage in campaign-style obfuscation to score political points at the expense of that greater good.
"This bill has become nothing more than a massive spending bill," he has said. "To portray it as stimulus flies in the face of reality."
Does McCain understand what stimulus is? It is an injection of cash into the economy, and providing federal and state agencies with funding to spend on projects that have to be contracted out to private companies that will then be able to, you know, pay their employees to do the work is a far surer syringe than yet another round of tax cuts that will ensure the wealthiest Americans have even more cash to sock away in untouchable offshore accounts. So yes, it is a massive spending bill. But it will spread the wealth to a far greater segment of the population and result in concrete, material results that benefit society as a whole than the same amount of money handed out in the form of tax cuts. And ain't nothin' wrong with that.
Let Rachel break it down for you.
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