Friday, November 17, 2006

LABEL REDUX - John McCain

First, Bush made famous the compassionate conservative moniker which basically amounted to next to nothing considering that time has borne out the fact that Bush is neither compassionate nor a conservative.

A couple of days ago, CNN developed the label moderate conservative and applied it to "America's Mayor" Rudy Giuliani. I'm assuming the moderate part of the label is to cover up any number of instances where Rudy would most certainly fall on the far end of conservative, including getting a few divorces, living with a gay couple and supporting a woman's right to choose.

Now joining the lexicon on pointless political spectrum labels, we have the common sense conservative, embodied by presidential hopeful John McCain. While I'm not precisely certain, could this be some sort of verbal exposition that diagrams McCain's obvious conservative streak that is somehow completely hidden in the light of the media as they continue to felate him with his maverick label? In other words, moderate and mavericky on the outside, conservative and squishy on the inside?

I suppose my only question now is, what's next? What presidential hopeful will step up with a brand new label? Perhaps Mitt Romney will come out as a Soft-and-Fuzzy Conservative - go give Mitt a hug - he's the cuddly conservative. Maybe Newt Gingrich can be the Mr. Rogers Conservative - he could wear cardigans and explain his economic plans with puppets.

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