McCain dredges up Phil Gramm

My opinion of John McCain just slipped a bit more (not like there was a chance in hell I'd vote for him anyway).

I've despised Phil Gramm ever since I was starting college. The disgraced Republican senator from Texas eventually retired from the Senate - but I knew there was a chance someone would dig up his still-living corpse while he's still around. (He's fairly young for a retired senator. But I think his soul died years ago.)

Gramm's trademark hangman's grin (pictured here) was legendary in the '90s. He was widely considered one of the nastiest American politicians of the era. (Molly Ivins called Phil Gramm and Dick Armey "two of the meanest guys ever to serve in the U.S. Congress.") Gramm is the man who proclaimed, "We're the only nation in the world where all our poor people are fat!" One day, when an elderly widow told Gramm that cutting Medicare would make it too hard to live independently, Gramm turned to her with a big smirk on his face and said, "You haven't thought about a new husband, have you?"

If there's one thing I hate, it's a bully. That's why I detest public officials like Gramm who make policies that are designed to force innocent people to suffer.

McCain is less of a bully than just a guy with anger management problems who doesn't know when to pull back. That doesn't excuse the fact that he actually made Gramm his chief adviser on economic issues.

On economic issues, of all things! Gramm would have been a perfect choice to become an adviser on, say, how to sneer. But it's economic matters where Gramm's tyranny usually came out in its fullest force. It's like making Bill McCollum drug czar. Phil Gramm is so extreme on economics that he doesn't believe in the concept of public property. Although he believes in strict laws on personal conduct, Gramm believes market forces should be essentially unregulated.

The long and short of it is, Gramm is a champion of "regulation for thee, not for me." His ultraconservative philosophy is built on total deregulation of Big Business and strict regimentation of personal morals (with more draconian drug laws and the like).

Gramm has influenced McCain's health care plan, but it's a sham. It gives too much power to insurers and essentially does nothing for low-income households. Even though John McCain voted against Bush's tax cuts for the rich, Gramm has now influenced him to support extending the cuts.

Not real mavericky of you, John.

There's some talk now that if McCain wins the election, he'll appoint Phil Gramm as Secretary of the Treasury - so we'll have to deal with Gramm's rectum-emptying garbledygoop again. Not like I'm willing to even view a Republican presidency as legitimate, because the GOP has screwed the pooch so hopelessly, but the dinosaur media doesn't have the gumption to call the party out for what it is.

(Source: http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/18/news/newsmakers/tully_gramm.fortune)