Flashback! John McCain in 2005

   From the November 26, 2005 Wall Street Journal: John McCain explains his eclectic–and troubling–economic philosophy.  By Stephen Moore.   Keep in mind Moore is a conservative/liberatarian who helped found the Club For Growth, is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and is on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. McCain has shrewdly tapped into the rage that conservatives are feeling over President Bush’s $800 billion Medicare drug bill (which he voted against), the highway bill with its 6,000 earmarked white-elephant projects (which he also voted against)…

He voted against the Bush tax cuts (“Way too tilted to the rich”), while supporting antigrowth initiatives to combat global warming (“Climate change is just a huge problem that really needs to be confronted”), and is the lead sponsor–with Sen. Ted Kennedy–of a guest worker program to allow immigrants to enter the country legally….”sometimes I have run-ins with the right-wingers in the party.”…

Mr. McCain is admirably one of the few leaders of the party willing to lock horns with the close-the-borders wing of the party. Of his adversaries on this issue, he asks: “What do they really want to do with the 11 million illegal immigrants that are here? Send them all back home?”

Mr. McCain readily departs from Reaganomics. His philosophy is best described as a work in progress. He is refreshingly blunt when he tell me: “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.”…

He grandstanded against the Bush capital-gains and dividend tax cuts and even co-sponsored an amendment with Tom Daschle to scuttle the reduction in the highest income-tax rates. Why? “I just thought it was too tilted to the wealthy and I still do. I want to cut the taxes on the middle class.”

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.