The Truth- About change, compromise and the obamessiah.

The Obamessiah may be able to part the seas, but he cannot cross the aisle.

There has been so much talk about Obama’s ability to reform Washington and bring about a new breed of politics. He talks a lot about bipartisan solutions and working together and all sorts of other wonderful ideas. Unfortunately, like so many other things Obama says, there is no reality to these claims.

Part of the strategy of the Obama campaign (which does not seem to be working terribly well at this point) is to paint McCain as a Bush clone. Obama rallies are filled with the witty (and grammatically challenged) chants of “no way, no how, no McCain” and many of his less-than-clever supporters have taken to calling McCain catchy monikers like McSame and McBush. ROFLMAO, or something.

To all of my fellow conservatives who are tired of hearing these lies, here is a recipe for silencing them. For all of my liberal (or simply confused) acquaintances who support Obama, in part due to a belief of these bumper-sticker slogans, here is a tiny morsel of cold, hard, unflavored truth, free of partisan additives. Hope you are not too full of the kool-aid you have been drinking to choke this down.

Let us start by dispelling the rumor that Obama reaches across the aisle, builds bi-partisan coalitions or practices a “new kind of politics.”

MYTH: Obama is a transcendental being who exists on a plane above usual partisan politics. In the speech Obama made at the 2004 DNC he said, "even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spinmasters and negative-ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything-goes," he said. "Well, I say to them tonight: There's not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America."

FACT- Obama is the most liberal member of the Senate. Now I know you have all heard this and you probably don’t know what it means and maybe you do not care. Let’s analyze what this title reflects: The National Journal Online comes up with these ratings based on careful non-partisan analysis of selected senate votes. These votes are chosen because they are divisive and they are only chosen if they have distinctly liberal and distinctly conservative aspects to the vote. This eliminates many of those unanimous votes (which are part of the reason people can say McCain votes with Bush 90% of the time, but we will get to that later), so the rating is based only on partisan votes and the point of the ratings is to determine how partisan someone actually is.

Here is the straight dope on Obama: Obama had a 95.5% Composite Liberal Score, including a 100% liberal sub-score in the social and economic categories. This means that Obama voted strict party line on 95.5% of the crucial partisan decisions he was asked to make. Not much room for bi-partisanship to fit in that remaining 4.5%, which came in the foreign policy category.

Now, some liberals or moderate-lefties may not be bothered by this, but super liberal politics are out of touch with a majority of voters, and since many Obama supporters are supporting him because he is going to bring this “great change” to Washington, these ratings should serve as evidence of the unwillingness to “change” anything. Obama votes the way his handlers and contributors want him to.

Some of the votes Obama has cast:

-A measure to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization: Obama missed the vote but has said he would have voted NO. It passed with massive bi-partisan support.

-A measure to require doctors to provide medical care for babies who survive abortions: Obama OPPOSED the measure. Not even superliberal Senator Kennedy opposed this humane piece of legislation.

-A measure to increase the weight of job skills in the visa application process, ensuring more skilled workers and less future government dependents: Obama OPPOSED this measure.

-A measure to force American Military withdrawal from Iraq in 4 months time (which would have been July 07) Obama SUPPORTED the measure. Had we pulled out, the gains in Iraq and the increased stability we see today would have never materialized. In fact, Obama voted for 5 different bills which would have resulted in immediate withdrawal and ensured defeat.

- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offered a sham ethics bill, which was widely criticized by watchdog groups such as Citizens Against Government Waste for shielding earmarks from public scrutiny. But instead of standing with taxpayers and breaking party lines, Obama VOTED FOR the bill.

Other liberal stances:

-When running for state office in the liberal Chicago area, Obama SUPPORTED a ban on the possession, sale and manufacturing of ALL handguns. He has backed down from that stance but is still on record as supporting a ban on ALL semiautomatic rifles. (Most hunting rifles are semiautomatic.)

-He supports plans to allow illegal immigrants to get state driver’s licenses. Only the extreme left of the democratic party concur with this.

-He supports a measure described by Hilary Clinton as a “trillion dollar tax hike” to raise billions from Social Security taxes, perhaps to pay for his trillions in proposed spending increases.

Surely, you think, Obama must have crossed the aisle on SOME issue. Well he has, on one issue, sort of. His one act of bipartisanship was a transparency bill co-sponsored with a Republican senator, which was backed by everybody on both sides of the aisle.

There you have it. Obama has never challenged his party's line on any issue of substance. Not to defend taxpayers. Not to defend liberty. Not to protect America. It makes sense now that Obama does not see “a liberal America and a conservative America.” It seems the liberal America is HIS America and the conservative America is something that he has only heard rumors about, but is as fictitious and irrelevant to him as Catholic Doctrine is to Nancy Pelosi.

But hey, I hear he can turn water into wine.

Now I will address the absolutely dishonest and disingenuous claim that John McCain is the next President Bush. Now, I realize that McCain himself claimed to have “voted with President Bush 90% of the time.” Admittedly I was baffled since Bush does not have a vote in the Senate. Either way, most of the votes in the Senate are gimmie votes, often given verbally en masse and do not involve any partisan bickering. In fact, Obama “voted with Bush” over 40% of the time in 2006. This is precisely why you cannot look at total votes, you have to break it down into relevant votes, like National Journal does.

So, lets cook ourselves up some more truth.

MYTH: McCain is in lock-step with President Bush, and will continue all of his “failed” policies.

FACT: John McCain has an 82.3% conservative rating from the American Conservative Union. This rating ranks him 39^th most conservative in the Senate, much closer to the center than being ranked most liberal, much to the chagrin of many conservatives including yours truly. However, this does not tell the entire story. His rating in 2006 was 65%.

If we look into it more we can see that there were substantive issues on which McCain has parted ways with his GOP peers. A list of issues on which McCain has broken with republicans include: stem cell research, immigration, same-sex marriage, climate change, gun restrictions, taxes, Kyoto, campaign finance reform and the IMF. Now, this is not to say that he completely opposes GOP ideas on these issues (breathe republicans, breathe…) it just means that he has parted ways with the GOP party line on some facet of these issues in floor votes.

In addition to this, McCain has been the leader in bi-partisan efforts for such issues as campaign finance reform, climate change and immigration. Please note that these are not issues I am rejoicing over, since many of the issues he has moved toward the center on are out of sync with many of my personal beliefs. I am just illustrating that he is willing to do what he thinks is right and he isn’t afraid of irritating (or in some cases, terrifying) conservatives like myself when necessary.

That is perhaps the most pathetic part of the democrat’s primary campaign stance; they are trying to label someone with a well established record of bi-partisanship as the party crony when their candidate appears to be freshly minted from the liberal clone production line.

McCain is beholden to no-one except his concept of justice and honor. Which occasionally makes conservatives nervous since we are often not exactly sure where that will take him.

I want to close now by putting partisanship aside. Let’s ignore the political policies of the two candidates. Let’s only look at independence, compromise and free thought.

On one end you have a candidate who never exercises free thought on any issues that matter. A candidate who always follows the lead of his party regardless of what is better for America. A candidate who talks eloquently and poetically about change and compromise but has missed numerous opportunities in his career to reach compromises, better yet lead his party to compromises. A candidate who has been more concerned about furthering his career and jockeying for position so he can run for president than standing for principles.

On the other end you have a candidate who has a history of splitting with his party on various issues when he thinks they are wrong. A candidate who does what he feels is best for America regardless of whether it appeases his party. A candidate who does not need to earn his place in his party or jockey for position, and therefore has the freedom to exercise free thought. A candidate who has shown that he puts what is right over what is politically expedient and has risked his very political life to stand for policies that are unpopular, but that he feels are critical to the country he has served for over half of his storied life.

Now, put aside the BS. Move past the celebrity endorsements, the peer pressure, the “cool” factor and the endless pandering with promises of government handouts. Move past the empty rhetoric, the condescension, the flowery speeches and the lofty promises. Who should really lead this country? Who can really “change” Washington DC?

Some of you support huge government, communist policies, unfettered abortion at any time under any circumstances, complete infringement of gun rights and income redistribution. You are comforted that Obama is an ideologue and you are looking forward to the extremist policies he will implement. Don’t kid yourself, it is not about change.

However, there are those of you who support him because you truly believe he is going to fulfill all those promises of “new politics” and “change.” I hope that you will look beyond the audacity of hype and seriously consider your position.

For those of you in the latter category, there you go, your morsel of truth. Eat up. The taste of truth can be a bit bitter to those who are not used to it, but don’t worry, it grows on you.