McCain Steadfast On Iraq Policy Support

To give people an idea of what kind of president he would be, John McCain invokes the Republican holy trinity. To give people an idea of what kind of president he would be, John McCain invokes the Republican holy trinity.

"I'm an Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan
Republican,"

the Arizona senator often tells his audiences.

They were presidents who stayed true to their core values and weren't afraid to make the tough decisions, McCain says. Like Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan, McCain professes an "unshakable belief in the greatness of America."

"My friends, that is the kind of principles and integrity and values we need
in a president of the United States today,"

he told the Johnson County Reagan Society in mid-October.

Republicans don't seem to be questioning the integrity of the former Navy pilot who bears scars of the five years he spent as a Viet Cong prisoner of war. However, many in the GOP deserted the 71-year-old McCain because of his push for immigration reform, and his support for a military surge in Iraq has cost him support among independents.

Immigration reform and an effort to change his image from straight-talking maverick to a more establishment-friendly party elder led to the near collapse of his campaign. He raised less money than his opponents. Several longtime campaign aides left. He laid off more than 80 staffers, including several in Iowa. McCain refused to give up. He has returned to the "Straight Talk" so popular when he ran in 2000 and focuses his remarks on core values and bringing spending under control.

He still talks about winning in Iraq, but immigration is rarely mentioned. However he packages himself, Democrats charge that McCain offers more of the same failed policies of the Bush administration. "John McCain has never met a failed President Bush policy that he didn't like," said Carrie Giddins, Iowa Democratic Party spokeswoman. "From the course in Iraq to the privatization of Social Security, McCain is simply out of step with the wishes of the American people." McCain doesn't think he's out of step with voters when taking aim at big-spending Democrats.

Although Iraq is an obvious reason for the GOP's staggering election losses in 2006, McCain said, "the real reason we lost our base is because we let spending get out of control." His favorite examples: $3 million to study the DNA of bears and the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska, which he calls the "tipping point."

"That's when our base said 'enough,"

he said.

"We can't keep up the spending as we are doing
in Washington and expanding entitlement programs and expanding them without
paying for them."

While other Republicans sometimes struggle to talk about their Iraq policy, McCain doesn't bat an eye as he endorses this summer's troop surge and the results. "We are succeeding. There are safer — safer — areas," he said.

It's the "transcendent issue" of the campaign, what McCain calls a "conflict between good and evil, between forces of radical Islamic extremism that is trying to destroy America and everything we believe in."

"The consequences of failure are
catastrophic,"

McCain warned, noting that the president of Iran has said that when the United States leaves Iraq, Iran will move in.

"Do you want Iran to fill the void in Iraq?"

That's what this is about," he said. Giddins, the Democratic spokeswoman, charges that despite making his foreign policy experience a centerpiece of his campaign, McCain offers nothing more than an extension of Bush's failures in Iraq."

From calling on Americans to 'stay the course' in Iraq in 2005 to insisting that Iraq was 'on the right track' in 2006, McCain has proved he simply cannot understand the realities in Iraq," Giddins said. "He wants American troops to have a long-term presence in the country even as civil war and sectarian violence erupts around them.' Democratic presidential candidates, however, McCain said, have gone from setting what he calls a "date for surrender" to saying the United States will be in Iraq until at least 2013.

McCain stoically accepts that his position on Iraq is unpopular, even among many Republicans, and threatens to undermine his standing with independents, whom the Republicans hope to win back after they fled the party in 2006. "

I know what's best for America,"

he said.

"I'm ready to serve, and I don't need any
on-the-job training."