McCain regrets MLK vote (MLK day)

McCain regrets MLK vote (MLK day)

blogs.abcnews.com

Sen. John McCain R-AZ spoke before a crowd of several hundred this morning in the pouring rain outside the Loraine Motel in Memphis, TN, the site where Dr. Martin Luther King Hr was assassinated 40 years ago today, and now home to the National Civil Rights Museum.

Invited to speak by the Southern Christian Leadership Council, McCain was greeted by a smattering of boos from the mostly African American crowd, as he spoke glowingly of the Civil Rights Leader.

(visit the link for the full news article)


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[edit on 4/5/2008 by biggie smalls]

This man does not know when to keep his mouth shut. Whether or not he voted for MLK day is irrelevant. He should not have mentioned this in the first place.

"We can be slow as well to give greatness its due, a mistake I made myself long ago when I voted against a federal holiday in memory of Dr. King. I was wrong and eventually realized that, in time to give full support for a state holiday in Arizona," McCain said.

He did admit a mistake, something Billary has a lot of trouble doing. I will give him credit for that.

Check the additional links below to watch the portion of his speech where he mentions MLK.


Guess what? I get to see him speak TOMORROW in Prescott, Arizona so I'll see what kind of crap this man spews.



blogs.abcnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Attend his event and get a feeling for this guy in person. Use your spirit not your prejudgements.

Why did he vote against MLK day in the first place? Odd.

reply to post by SteveR


I think he originally voted against MLK day because he thought it was a bad idea...aka MLK wasn't a "good enough" person to deserve his own holiday.


McCain voted against MLK day in 1983

In a Feb. 9 “Hardball” interview with Chris Matthews, McCain compared his evolution to that of one of his political heroes, former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater. “I believe that Barry Goldwater, to start with, regretted his vote on the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” McCain said. “I think that Barry grew, like all of us grow and evolve. In 1983, when I was brand-new in the Congress, I voted against the recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King. That was a mistake, OK? And later I had the chance to … help fight for … the recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King as a holiday in my state.”

Here he's saying he evolved as a person between both the votes. At first he was against the creation of a MLK holiday. Then later he decided it was OK? Sounds like political maneuvering to me. He benefitted from voting for it the second time as he looked like he cared about equal rights and justice.

In 1983, McCain voted against passing a bill to designate the third Monday of every January as a federal holiday in honor of King. Four years later, then-Arizona Governor Evan Mecham rescinded Martin Luther King Day as a state holiday, saying it had been established through an illegal executive order by his Democratic predecessor.

McCain said he thought Mecham was correct in his decision.

Two years after that, McCain’s viewpoint began to change, but only gradually. In 1989, he urged lawmakers to make Martin Luther King Jr. day a state holiday, but said he was “still opposed to another federal holiday.”

Well so far no more federal holidays have been enacted. I voted for the St Paddy's day holiday, but that didn't get enough petitions apparently .

Originally posted by biggie smalls
I think he originally voted against MLK day because he thought it was a bad idea...aka MLK wasn't a "good enough" person to deserve his own holiday.

I have read that he voted against it because he wanted all the records that the government had on him to be released first - so he could see if the guy was worthy enough to have a national holiday named for him.

I agree. Everything should be vetted before something that big is awarded to someone. It's huge.

However, after not getting the records released, he reviewed what was available and said okay to it. Yes, I'm sure it was for political reasons - appease the black vote kind of thing.

As for him making note of it at the event ... I think that he once again apologized is okay. The event was supposed to be about MLK and not about McCain, but perhaps part of that day is accepting apologies from people who have slighted others.

I don't get this whole individual observance day thing anyway. It is inevitable that it backfires. I mean there's only 365 days available to assign to people. Knock off the ones already claimed by consumerism and there's ~355-360 depending on who you ask. Since it's really impractical for every single day to be some sort of holiday let's say only half can. Can't really have many during the Summer because unless they're blowing stuff up kids aren't going to be interested, so it has to be while they're in school. As such you have to consider the work load on the teacher. Just how often are they going to have to visit the xerox machine to make a couple dozen pictures of some dead guy to color? So halve the remaining days just for the sake of saving some trees. That leaves 45 days to designate as days of observance. Ouch. I think some people have already seen this problem and have started consolidating days. There's no more Lincoln or Washington Day... it's just President's Day. The end of WWI has its own day, but to save days we honor the veterans of all wars since then on that day. If we keep assigning days to political activists, eventually there is no doubt we are going to have to just bundle them all together as Activist Day.

Now who here thinks the Federal Government is actually going to do that?


[edit on 5-4-2008 by apc]

I'd rather there be NO DAYS to political activists or politicians apc. None. NO presidents day. No MLK day. None of that.

Honor those who died for this country on Memorial Day. Yes.
Veterans day? Yes.
Have our nation's birthday - 4th of July. Yes.
Labor day? No.
Days for politicians and/or activists? No.

Just my opinion.

McCain inferred that he was unaware of MLK's importance when he cast his nay vote in 1983, partly due to the fact that he spent most of that era as a prisoner of war, and partly due to Arizona not having a large African-American population. Frankly, I think that's a snow job, but that's what he said. He also evidently did not learn of MLK's importance until roughly 1990, which is the main reason that I don't buy into the use of his POW status as an excuse for his ignorance of MLK's accomplishments. Arizona nevertheless did not recognize the holiday until 1992 (for the record, they were next to last, since New Hampshire held out until 1999). As some previous posts mentioned, I've also heard the Mecham angle as well. There are at least three different, vaguely related excuses that McCain has given.

McCain was booed during his speech in Memphis regarding his past lack of support for MLK. One also wonders whose bright idea it was to have an African-American stand next to McCain and hold an umbrella to keep McCain from getting wet while giving that speech... I'm sure that appeared offensive to many people in the audience. If nothing else, it was so politically stupid that I wonder if he actually has any advisers on his payroll who aren't insane.

See this Huffington Post article or this FoxNews blog for sources to my prior statements that do not relate to my personal opinions.

/tn.

EDIT: Exchanged some pronouns for proper nouns.

[edit on 6-4-2008 by teleonaut]