That’s the headline on the lead editorial
News, which whacks House Speaker Denny Hastert
for his disgraceful suggestion that John McCain needs to go visit wounded
soldiers to learn something about sacrifice. I know McCain is not the GOP
leadership’s favorite, but how dare Speaker Hastert, who escaped Vietnam
service on a medical deferment, say such a thing about a senator who was
beaten so badly by the communists that he can’t raise his hands above his
head, and who refused to end his torment by leaving prison early, ahead of
his comrades, when the North Vietnamese offered to let him go? It boggles
the mind that Hastert would stoop so low — and over a budget issue,
on which McCain happens to be right. It makes me ill that the GOP runs the
executive and the legislative branches, and this conservative government is
spending worse than Democrats.
McCain is right to say that’s wrong. I wish more Republicans would. I’m
sick of being told we can have tax cuts without cuts in nonmilitary
spending, which as we know has skyrocketed under this administration. I
don’t believe we can, and I believe President Bush and the Congress are
saddling my generation with an incredible burden. I used to trust the
Republicans to be the party of fiscal responsibility. Now I don’t think any
such thing exists.
