Glenn Greenwald takes a shot at the "Myth of the Independent Republican Senators" in War Room 09/22/06. The inspiration for his post, of course, is what looks like the complete capitulation of Maverick McCain and the other two or three supposedly "principled" Republican Senators who were challenging the CIA piece of the Cheney-Bush torture program. He writes:
Anyone who, at any time over the past five years, has placed faith in those Republican senators who parade around as independent checks on the president has suffered nothing but one disappointment after the next. The poster child for this complex is Arlen Specter, who may be the most vivid example, but he is far from the only one. Is there any significant Bush administration policy or action over the past five years that "moderate, independent" Republicans have stopped or even diluted (or even tried to stop) in any meaningful way? They engage in the pretense of independence over and over, but then end up not just failing to impede, but actively enabling, the administration's most extreme measures.
Certain pundits who have been decrying the Bush administration's use of torture as the ultimate evil have, at the same time, been glorifying Sen. John McCain (and others like Sen. John Warner) as exemplary independent political figures. Andrew Sullivan is an example of such a pundit, as is David Broder. What will Sullivan and Broder say now that their allegedly independent and principled heroes have expressly endorsed a legislative framework that authorizes torture? It is time for every honest and rational person who wanted to believe in the Myth of the Independent Republican Senators (and I include myself in that group) to declare this myth dead and bury it once and for all.
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