Empty Cheerleading

John Sith McCain on pork:

I'll give him this much: he talks a good game.  But then again, it's easy for him to do so.  Pork-barrel spending is the easiest thing for any pol to rail against, because (1) everybody is against pork - except their own, of course, and don't you DARE touch it or they'll send your wrinkled ass back to Arizona so fast your yellowed teeth will rattle; and (2) it is akin to standing at the bottom of the ocean and vowing to fight the rain.  A flurry of McCain anti-pork vetoes would simply and effortlessly be overridden by the vastly expanded Donk majorities in Congress, who won't even need many GOP crossovers to do so.  In order for (NOT drunken) Sailor to do what he promises, he'd need the line-item veto, and the Dems got that thrown out as "unconstitutional" years ago.

Most conspicuous by its absence here or anywhere else in the McCain campaign is a promise to shrink the federal government.  Pork, as I've written until my knuckles go arthritic, is a symptom of Big Government, not the disease itself.  It's as old as the Republic itself.  It's simply so much more garish now because the federal government is so much more enormous than it once was.  If you want to reduce earmarks - or the eeeeeevil lobbyists that stimulate them - rail against Big Government, Senator.  You know, like your alleged hero the Gipper use to.

Until you do, the GOP base you claim is "united" behind you will conclude that all your rhetoric means is a few token swipes at the federal behemoth followed by a quick retreat into your trademark "maverick" RINO instinct to "work together" with your "good, close, personal friends" across the aisle to "do the people's business," most crucial and important of which are studies of bear DNA in Montana, collection and storage of seeds for research purposes, crop research facilities, and the production of hard, white wheat, and savage your "fellow" Republicans for going along with it.  That won't even earn you an apathetic center-right shrug, much less the sort of energy and turnout you'll need to get within single-digits of the Rapture.

But by all means, keep working on that presentation.  You'll need it to get your own pork barrel projects into bloated Donk appropriations bills in the long, bleak years to come.