Meet the hypocrites: Senator John McCain

With wife Cindy and daughter Meghan supporting marriage equality, holiday dinners with the family sure must be hard for Senator John McCain (being outnumbered by his "enemy" and all). Not only does McCain not support marriage equality, but he also continues to live in Fantasyland, believing that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is just peachy, despite saying he'd change his views if the nation's top military commanders asked him to.

So much for Captain McCain respecting the chain of command.

Here's Senator McCain on DADT in 2006:

"The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, Senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to."

And just this past week Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came to Senator McCain and the Senate Armed Services Committee and expressed the need to end the failed policy.

“No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senator John McCain, despite hearing from the President's top military advisor, responded with the typical dogmatic and rigid conservative Republican stance:

This would be a substantial and controversial change to a policy that has been successful for two decades. It would also present yet another challenge to our military at a time of already tremendous stress and strain. Our men and women in uniform are fighting two wars, guarding the frontlines against a global terrorist enemy, serving and sacrificing on battlefields far from home, and working to rebuild and reform the force after more than eight years of conflict. At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.

The reason for the Senator's hypocritical stance on this issue, which is completely out of line with the "maverick" Wizard-of-Oz-pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain image that he has carefully cultivated, is that McCain is facing a primary challenge from conservative former Congressman and talk radio host J.D. Hayworth. In a state where Republicans have made an art form of demonizing people who are different, specifically the Hispanic and LGBT communities, McCain must feel that he can't afford to be out-teabagged by a teabagger. Surely if the Senate goes to work on immigration reform, McCain will alter his viewpoint on that issue to fit his political needs.

It just goes to show that biconceptuals like John McCain and Dave Reichert follow the political winds which ever way they may blow, in order to keep their seats. It's doesn't make for good public policy, but most always shows that they are hypocrites.