George Will, curmudgeonly conservative columnist, pointedly asks John McCain a few worthwhile questions in yesterday’s column:
- You say you are not “ready to go to war with Iran,” but you also say the “one thing worse” than “exercising the military option” is “a nuclear-armed Iran.” Because strenuous diplomacy has not dented Iran’s nuclear ambitions, is not a vote for you a vote for war with Iran?
- You vow to nominate judges who “take as their sole responsibility the enforcement of laws made by the people’s elected representatives.” Their sole responsibility? Do you oppose judicial review that invalidates laws that pure-hearted representatives of the saintly people have enacted that happen to violate the Constitution? Does your dogmatic deference to popular sovereignty put you at odds with the first Republican president, who nobly insisted that there are some things the majority should not be permitted to do—hence his opposition to allowing popular sovereignty to determine the status of slavery in the territories? Do you also reject Justice Antonin Scalia’s belief that the Constitution’s purpose is “to embed certain rights in such a manner that future generations cannot readily take them away”? Does this explain your enthusiasm for McCain-Feingold’s restrictions on political speech, and your dismissive reference to, “quote, First Amendment rights”? Would you nominate judges who, because they think those are more than “quote … rights,” doubt McCain-Feingold’s constitutionality?
- Having raised $95 million in February and March, Barack Obama is reconsidering whether to rely on taxpayer funding in the general election, which would limit him to spending only $84.1 million. You denounce Obama for this, but your adviser Charles Black says, “We could sit down in July or August and say, ‘Hey, we’re raising a lot of money and maybe we should forgo [taxpayer financing].’ We don’t have enough data.” Really, how does your position differ from Obama’s? ((The numbering is my own.))