An appropriate, well-deserved smackdown of John McCain from Harry Reid. McCain's out on the campaign trail giving speeches about Iraq, but can't find the time to actually vote on Iraq:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is the only presidential candidate in Congress to have missed a major vote on the Iraq war this year, and his absences are not sitting well with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).McCain's staff's response was basically, yep, that's right. McCain is too busy campaigning to vote:
Liz Oxhorn, a spokeswoman for Reid, told The Hill, “Sen. McCain has spent considerable time defending the president on Iraq and catering to the Republican base on immigration, but has only managed to show up for four of the last 14 Iraq votes and parachute into [yesterday’s] immigration press conference at the last minute. Who is the real John McCain?”
McCain’s campaign said the rigorous travel schedule necessary when running for the White House makes it extremely difficult to be voting all the time in Washington.Regrettably, it is impossible for us to win in Iraq because Senator McCain and his GOP colleagues never held George Bush accountable. McCain can give all the speeches he wants. He blew it.
“Sen. McCain has traveled the country speaking to the importance of winning in Iraq and clearly stated that we must give the new strategy a chance to succeed because the consequences of failure would be too damaging to our nation,” Diaz said.
“Regrettably, it is impossible for a presidential candidate to avoid missing votes, but Sen. McCain has not missed a vote where his vote would have affected the outcome, and he will make every effort to be in the Senate on the occasions when it would.”
