Politics: How John McCain Became Republicans’ Voice of Reason

Before I get to the post, I should do this introduction where due to random chance, I will now be alternating the posts of this blog on Mondays with that of my TV blog which should also now be on the Mondays that I don’t do this blog. Note that this will mean that if a new episode airs, this would mean that if the blog isn’t updated on a Monday, it will be on a Tuesday as usual. This might also mean there could be a lot more of these political posts for a while to fulfill the needed Mondays until this blog is only updated on Mondays. I’ll let you know of any changes.

First off, and I want to say this in the most sincere way possible: I will miss John McCain. I never thought that I would miss him. I didn’t like him back in 2008. I’m surprised that him constantly calling someone who is developmentally challenged as autistic never got any black lash. There is a huge difference between the two things. But then things changed.

Maybe it was the fact that once the unimaginable happened and Trump was elected president that something changed inside of him. Maybe it was his cancer. But he became his party’s voice of reason. While the rest of the Republicans for the most part had decided to be a rubber stamp on the disastrous agenda that Trump has, John McCain would be the person pointing out the flaws and issues with such things.

I don’t know if it was just the cancer inside him that made him change his mind. But what I do know is that people expected him to vote to get rid of universal health care when he came back to the floor to vote after the treatment of these health problems. But he now has the famous thumbs down as he realized that his treatment was not something that everyone could have if they didn’t have universal health care. Whatever the reasoning behind his vote, the country was saved from the disastrous health care bill before the floor.

Were there other times that he stood up against his party when they needed a Gibbs slap? I like to think so, even if I can’t think of them off hand. He did and said a lot in the last few years when he was in office. Now he’s dead and I might honestly miss him a lot, especially if whoever ends up replacing him just goes with the flow all the time instead of making choices themselves. I do now yet know when a potential special election might be. But I will say this, John McCain, rest in peace. You were the voice of reasoning within the Republican party. I just hope that someone else can now fill that spot.

Politics: Following the Illinois Attorney General Race: 2018 Round Two

Ever since I could first vote in 2010, I came up with a rule that I have always followed. The rule is this: you must vote for one Democrat, one Republican, and one third party candidate (this was originally green party candidate, but later amended).

You may correctly think that I do not like Republicans generally and may be shocked to learn that I have, indeed, voted for one in every general election. And one running unopposed is not a free vote. I have to vote for one who is running against a Democrat, or at least, a third party candidate. While you might have already guessed why I brought this up in this post, I should explain more.

You see, I’m wary of the Democratic candidate for attorney general, Kwame Raoul. He seems to have too many ties to the tobacco industry to be a good candidate. I could not support any candidate who has ties to tobacco. I’d sooner vote for a lifetime NRA member.

It sets off the fact that it might be a conflict of interest that he would take donations from them since there is a still ongoing case with these people donating to him with tens of millions of dollars at state. While we do not want any politician in this or any other state to be corrupt, the last person that we’d want to be corrupt or subject to conflicts of interest is the attorney general, considering how that is the state’s top prosecutor.

What are the problems with Erika Harold, the Republican candidate? Well, as far as I can see, there are none. I would never be someone blinded by party loyalty to vote for a horrible liberal just because that’s how I normally vote. She has the lawyer experiences that one would need to be an attorney general.

While I normally would prefer a candidate who has had an elective office in the past when I vote for some races, this is not one of them as she only needs to have experience in the courtroom. Plus, if J B wins the governor race and even if he doesn’t, I think that it would be a better check on the power of the state to have a Republican as the attorney general because it would keep the Democrats from being too powerful. All we can hope is that if she wins, she wouldn’t get too power hungry and go after whoever she wants to. But I doubt that would happen even if she does end up losing.

I would talk about the third party candidate in the race like Bubba Harsy, the libertarian, but I do not see a point in doing so. When it comes time for the general election in Illinois, there is only one logical vote: Erika Harold. I’ll vote for her in November and I endorse her so please vote for her if you are able to.