Junto Boys

TALK RADIO IS SPLIT ON McCAIN

Bringing up baby has been tough on my reading habits these last few weeks, but I have found that talk radio suits this lifestyle just dandy because you can tune in and out at will and not miss the story arc. Rush, Laura Ingrham, and Mark Levin are all sour on McCain while Dennis Miller and Michael Medved like McCain. What's interesting is that Miller and Medved draw just as many anti-McCain calls as the others. I guess they don't have any mind-numbed robots.

I haven't heard as much of Miller this week, but I like this talk radio style quite a bit. He's honest about himself and he doesn't get into arguments with callers. He's more like Socrates. An anti-McCain caller told Dennis that he doesn't like McCain-Feingold and Dennis asked the caller how that has hurt him personally. It stumped the caller, because he probably hadn't thought about it in personal terms, but as a matter of philosophy. Dennis sort of takes the tract that it doesn't really hurt anything.

Medved has been more confrontational with callers. One listener told him that McCain was a RINO (Republican in name only) and that he couldn't vote for such a man. Medved said that if the caller wouldn't vote for the Republican nominee, then the caller was actually the RINO. That was his Yale Law School training at work.

Medved has also been theorizing that some conservatives hate McCain not because of politics but personality. He's termed such people as having MDS (McCain derangement syndrome). I actually find McCain's personality likable enough. His speech at the 2004 Republican convention was powerful. When I see the poor guy struggle to lift his arms, I feel regret for him.

Today Medved proposed that Bush, although lionized by conservatives, believes in all of the same things as McCain so why are we singling out John John. What I would have said to Medved is that Bush didn't come into the White House touting a liberal record and his straying from orthodoxy has cost him a great deal of affection. I wouldn't have supported Bush in the 2000 primaries if I knew he would expand Medicare, federalize airport screeners, look the other way at omnibus spending bills, support amnesty for illegals, sign McCain/Feingold etc. He was a blank slate back then that I projected conservative warmth onto. What Medved doesn't mention is that Bush's approval rating sits at 33%, that's 17 points less than the number of people that voted to re-elect him in 2004. Had Bush governed as a conservative domestically, I imagine that number would be 10-20 points higher.

Medved admitted to other callers that he disagreed with McCain on water boarding, Guantanmo Bay, Campaign Finance Reform, but it's no big deal to him.

I've listened to Miller on the radio more often than Medved, but I read Medved's autobiography a few years back so I think I understand both men decently. Miller is always impressed by military men and he admits more so because he himself isn't one. Even when he was touting Bush over Kerry in 2004, Miller was always praising Kerry's service. Way back in 1993, he did a comedy special on HBO where he defended Perot's running mate, Admiral Stockdale, saying that this was a great American hero who was made fun of simply because he was bad on television.

Like Miller, Medved is a convert to conservatism. Medved was a war protester during Vietnam and a personal friend of Hillary Clinton during their days at Yale. They no longer speak to one another. I think Medved feels a certain amount of guilt over those protests and a certain awe for a veteran like McCain that did the right thing back then.

I think in both cases, McCain's military record trumps the other issues for these guys. They see his heroism as so admirable that they don't understand why the movement conservatives want more out of a candidate. Sorry fellas, but some of us do.