McCain Skips Economic Stimulus Vote

My comments: In John-Kerry fashion, John McCain was absent for a difficult and contraversial vote. In fact, according to the Associated Press, he has missed all eight Senate roll call votes this year! Also in the article was this telling statement: "For McCain, not voting meant not going on the record either way."

Yeah...that's real presidential. Reminds me of that "Yes, no, maybe bowl of mush" that Zell Miller talked about.

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"WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidate John McCain skipped a difficult Senate vote Wednesday on whether to make 20 million seniors and 250,000 disabled veterans eligible for rebate checks as part of a proposed economic stimulus package.

Whichever way McCain may have voted, it would have been a difficult choice given his status as the Republican presidential front-runner.

Senate Democrats cleverly bundled the rebates for seniors and veterans, key voting blocs, with expanded unemployment benefits and home heating subsidies for the jobless and poor.

President Bush and Republican leaders, as well as conservatives McCain was scheduled to woo on Thursday, vehemently oppose the expanded benefits and subsidies.

That put McCain in a bad political spot.

Voting "no" with Republican leaders would have offended millions of Social Security recipients and the disabled veterans not scheduled to receive rebates. Voting "yes," on the other hand, risked alienating Bush, GOP leaders and conservatives already suspicious of McCain's political leanings. McCain was speaking Thursday before a meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, a group that booed him last year in absentia.

For McCain, not voting meant not going on the record either way. He has missed all eight Senate roll call votes this year." STORY