McCain blames GOP for losing elections
Spending was out of control, he says
CONWAY, S.C. -- Republicans spent their way into losing control of Congress, presidential candidate John McCain said yesterday.
"The reason why we lost that election, my dear friends, was because we let spending get out of control," the Republican senator from Arizona told a breakfast crowd in Conway. "We came to power in 1994 to change government and government changed us."
Republicans began to value power over principle, which caused spending to lurch completely out of control, McCain told 225 people at a restaurant on a bend in the Waccamaw River, not far from Myrtle Beach.
"It's got to stop," he said of the excesses, which also led to corruption among members of Congress. "We're going to have to clean up our act."
On the Iraq war, McCain said the "titanic" struggle pits supporters of the nation's values against those of radical fundamentalism.
"We lose this war and come home, they'll follow us home," he said.
McCain has strongly backed President Bush's troop "surge" in Iraq, but he has conceded that his presidential aspirations would be seriously hurt if US casualties are not down by next year.
Voter concerns about his Iraq stance were also apparent as McCain made a brief campaign foray into New York last week. He was asked about it by some of the several hundred donors who paid $1,000 or more to attend a fund-raiser Thursday night.
In South Carolina yesterday, McCain was told that some Republicans think he is not conservative enough.
"I think you should judge people by their record," said McCain, who trails former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani in polls. "I am conservative across the board and I will match my record with anybody in America, much less anybody who is running."
Although he has been ahead in the polls, Giuliani continues to face some questions among conservatives over his troubled family relationships.
Twenty-seven years after Ronald Reagan became the only divorced candidate to win the presidency, Giuliani is hoping that when it comes to family values, voters will be as accommodating.
Republican strategists say Giuliani's family issues are likely to hinder his standing among conservatives who already have questions about his positions on social issues. They say the estrangement could raise a question in voters' minds: If Giuliani can't keep his family together, how will he keep the country together?
Giuliani's support for abortion and gay rights, his backing of gun control measures, and his very New Yorkness have already given conservatives pause about his candidacy. He has also marched in gay pride parades, dressed up in drag, and lived temporarily with a gay couple and their Shih Tzu.
Then came the stories about his family.
"There's obviously a little problem that exists between me and his wife," his son Andrew, a 21-year-old student at Duke University, recently told The
Standing outside the Los Angeles County sheriff's headquarters last week, the former New York mayor faced questions about the estrangement from his son. "The more privacy I can have for my family, the better we are going to be able to deal with all these difficulties," he said.
America has gotten a look at what New York tabloid readers were familiar with from the pre-Sept. 11, 2001, world, when Giuliani's planned 2000 Senate campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton fell apart in the face of reports about his prostate cancer and the messy and very public breakup of his marriage to TV personality Donna Hanover.
Judith Nathan was the other woman back then and subsequently became Giuliani's third wife and stepmother to the two Giuliani-Hanover children, Andrew and Christine. Giuliani's first marriage to Regina Peruggi, his second cousin, ended after 14 years in divorce and later an annulment.
In today's Republican Party, religious conservatives hold greater sway than in Reagan's day, said political scientist Gerald Benjamin.
"The mobilization of the Christian right is a movement of contemporary Republican politics," said Benjamin.
