John McCain page @ RemoveRINOs - conservative republicans and independents replacing RINOs with Constitutional conservatives

John McCain - 2001

We've a new Republican in the white house, yet to prove his conservative bona fides ..

We hold the slimmest of majorities in a senate which has been slipping from its conservative grasp since 1994 ..

At a time when the GOP could go either way, the way of Reagan or the way of Ford, we had one senator from Arizona to show us the way:

McCAIN's FIRST 100 DAYS:
The Senator in "his new role
as the No. 1 Republican
counterweight to Bush

He opposed the Bush tax cuts (ACU-9).

"He blasted Bush for blocking the Kyoto Protocol" (Nowicki & Muller)

"He teamed with ... Edward Kennedy... and John Edwards...on an HMO reform bill that Bush wanted stopped"

"[He] joined forces with.... Joseph Lieberman...for legislation that would have increased regulation of gun-
show sales" (Nowicki & Muller) .

"I haven't seen John smile that much since he won the New Hampshire primary" - anonymous friend comment on McCain's reaction to the democrats taking over the senate after Jeffords switched parties. (Dowd)

then, he really got down to business .....

Voted FOR forcing the US. to comply with the Kyoto Treaty despite our never having ratified it (ACU-11).

Voted FOR 2005 amendment to remove language in the budget that would have safeguarded tax cuts (ACU-13)

Voted FOR a 2005 job-killing bill in hopes of keeping the climate from changing. The real kicker is that the bill,
which required "greenhouse emissions" be brought down to 2000 levels, openly acknowledged it would kill jobs. For more information about the bill's recklessness (and zaniness), please see the following National
Review piece by Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute: "Surrender Monkeys in The Senate:
Senate Republicans follow the French president’s lead on global warming" (ACU-13).

Voted AGAINST reducing the capital-gains tax from 20% to 15% as a stimulus measure (ACU).

Sponsored and, of course, voted FOR his brainchild: Campaign Finance Reform, one of the greatest abridgments of free speech in our history (WP-6).

Read what Brian Darling of the Heritage Foundation says about Campaign Finance Reform: "Campaign Capital; Repeal McCain-Feingold Law And Mandate Disclosure Instead."

Hear what McCain himself says about it on The Don Imus Show: "John McCain Admits That McCain-Feingold
Is Unconstitutional."

Read what Doug Patton of Humanevents.com, says about this criminalization of free speech: "McCain-Feingold Doing What Its Authors Intended."

Voted AGAINST a Constitutional safeguard for Campaign-Finance Reform (s. 27, roll call 59) According to the
ACU, the amendment would have ensured “that if one of several specific provisions in the underlying bill,
mainly the ban on soft money, disclosure requirements for issue-group advertising, and hard money limits, [were] found to be an unconstitutional infringement of the First Amendment, then the other provisions
specified would also be invalid.

Sought and succeeded to kill a GOP amendment that would have required unions to get permission from dues paying members before spending those dues on political activities. The requirement also would have applied to corporations and their shareholders (ACU)

Voted AGAINST permanently repealing the death tax (ACU-10) .

Voted FOR a Democrat amendment that would make tax cuts much harder to enact (ACU-12).

Voted AGAINST greater pork-barrel disclosure (ACU-14). As the ACU explains, the amendment would have increased “the number of pork barrel ‘earmarks’ that would have to be disclosed by the Senators proposing them.”

Voted AGAINST drilling for oil in ANWR in 2005 (ACU-13).

Voted AGAINST repealing dividend taxes. An affront to economic growth and economic liberty, this practice constitutes double taxation against private investors. One of only three GOP senators to vote against the repeal,
McCain teamed up with Olympia Snowe and Lincoln Chafee to nearly sabotage this effort at tax reform. Dick Cheney's tiebreaker is all that prevented these three senators from getting their way (ACU-11).

Voted AGAINST cutting 350 billion dollars in taxes over 11 years (ACU-11).

Voted FOR a 2005 amendment that would have hiked taxes on the oil industry (ACU-13).

Voted FOR allowing illegal aliens to claim social security credit for work done prior to receiving a social-security
number (ACU-14).

Voted FOR a 2006 amnesty bill for illegal aliens. As the ACU explains, this precursor to the amnesty bill of 2007 was a bill "overhauling U.S. immigration laws and offering a path to citizenship for most illegal immigrants in
the country." This bill was spun as a "guest worker program" (ACU-14).

Voted AGAINST border fence that, according to the ACU, would have provided for "the construction of 370 miles of double-layered fencing and at least 461 miles of vehicle barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border" (ACU-14).

Teamed with Ted Kennedy to co-sponsor 2007 amnesty bill (ACU - 15). Arguably, the GOP still hasn't recovered from this blow to its conservative identity.