McCain Delivers the Democratic Response

Here comes the McCain rhetoric that we didn't hear during the primary battles with conservatives:

Speaking before the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles, he rejected the president’s determination to keep the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba open. He also said it was time to negotiate a new global warming treaty.

“We can’t torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured,” he said. “I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.”

On global warming and the international treaty that President Bush abandoned after taking office, McCain said: “There is such a thing as international good citizenship.” He added: “We need a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner.”

And in other excerpts:

“The United States cannot lead by virtue of its power alone,” McCain said. Instead, the country must lead by [among other things] creating new international institutions to advance peace and freedom, he said....

So much for American exceptionalism.

McCain also drew applause for his definition of success in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he said “is the establishment of peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic states that pose no threat to neighbors and contribute to the defeat of terrorists … It is the triumph of religious tolerance over violent radicalism.”

McCain said the United States’ goal in fighting Islamic extremists should be “to win the hearts and minds of the vast majority of moderate Muslims who do not want their future controlled by a minority of violent extremists.

“In this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs.”

So in other words, we need to import more foreign students from Islamic countries so they'll love us. This is a plan that you'd expect to be advanced by Hillary or Obama.

Thanks, John. I'd almost forgotten why I wasn't going to vote for you.