Here's Why John McCain Scares Me - Part 1

This is the first of what will likely be many posts in the coming months on why I don't cherish the idea of President John McCain. In this simple question and answer from an interview with Der Speigel (a German magazine), we see more than one reason for conservatives to worry about the GOP soon-to-be nominee:

SPIEGEL: America has lost a lot of friends because President George W. Bush angered, indeed outraged, them. He allowed human rights to be violated at Guantanamo Bay, and he dismissed the joint effort to combat global warming. Under a President McCain, could we expect a change of course?

McCain: Yes. I would announce that we are not ever going to torture anyone held in American custody. I would announce that we were closing Guantanamo Bay and moving those prisoners to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and I would announce a commitment to addressing climate change and my dedication to a global agreement -- but it has to include India and China.

That was a fine answer - for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. That was an abysmal response for someone who claims to be a "true conservative".

Let me answer that question the way I think a conservative should handle it:

"First of all, the premise of your question is pure crap. Nobody's human rights have been violated at Gitmo. The people we have there barely qualify as human based on their activities and ideology, but they've been accorded far more rights than they would have accorded you or I in their society. They were captured trying to kill Americans, and that my friend, earns you an all-expense paid trip to Gitmo for as long as we want to keep you there.

Nobody has been tortured. Yes, we've use some aggressive techniques against some of them to obtain information that has saved the lives of innocent citizens, but nothing we have done up to and including waterboarding constitutes torture. You may notice that all of them still have their heads. That's more than you can say for many people captured by their colleagues around the world.

As long as we have people like this in custody Gitmo will remain in operation. There's no way I'll ever allow these animals to set foot on American soil and become subject to Constitutional protections they haven't earned and clearly do not deserve. If the world community objects, that's too bad. If you want these guys to live in your neighborhood, just give the word and they'll be on their way...and we'll pay the shipping.

As far as global warming is concerned, it's one of the biggest hoaxes ever played on humankind. Yes, the climate is changing, just as it has warmed and cooled for millions of millenia, and there's not a darn thing we can do about it. The science is far from conclusive that man's carbon output could effect the planet even 1 degree, and with new information from solar scientists that we could actually be facing dramatic cooling in the near future, now is not the time to hamstring our economy by signing up for a bunch of production-killing promises that most countries will never keep.

We were right to reject Kyoto, and I can't see any reason to sign on to anybody else's climate pipe dream.

Next question."

That's how a conservative answers a question like that.

UPDATE: Some polling info from Jim Geraghty:

The most ominous number in the poll for McCain comes on the question, "Would you be satisfied if John McCain ended up the winner in the Republican race, or would you have preferred to see one of the other Republican presidential candidates win?" Right now it's 51 percent satisfied, 45 percent "would have preferred another."

Now there's a ringing endorsement.