Arizona's first debate for the Republican primary race had a few memorable moments but none summed up the Republican Party's view on what is "pork" and what they consider their priorities on spending than than this bit by John McCain. Spending for teachers, it's pork, but we need to keep that military industrial complex going and make sure that the people "making those wonderful missiles"... the "job creators", have their taxes cut.

"Wonderful missiles"... I can't believe he said that, but he did. I can't think of a single reason to call missiles "wonderful" unless you think dropping bombs on people's heads is a "wonderful" thing. There's an argument to be made for "necessary" for civil defense which I'm not going to get into the weeds on here since IMO we're over-armed to a ridiculous extent for what's actually necessary for civil defense and have been for some time now, but "wonderful"?

I'll just leave it at this. When I hear the likes of McCain or any other Republican start talking about fixing our trade laws that encourage companies to ship jobs overseas instead of just more tax cuts for the rich and large corporations, I'll believe they're serious about protecting jobs in the United States. McCain is all hat and no cattle and sadly without cleaning them up as as Howie and others at this site have tried to do, we don't have a decent opposition party to this bull pucky.

I'll also just add that it's really just pitiful that it looks like Arizona is going to get McCain back as their Senator for another six years and that the fact that J.D. Hayworth is completely corrupt didn't arise as more of a problem for him in their state with his primary challenge to McCain.

Transcript below the fold.

Moderator: You’ve stated your opposition to extending unemployment benefits. Isn’t that hurting many of your constituents here in Arizona, where the unemployment rate is above the national average and what would you do to bring jobs back to Arizona?

McCain: Well thank you. On the issue of unemployment benefits, of course we Republicans in the Senate under the leadership of Mitch McConnell and Jon Kyl who’s doing a fantastic job, we want to extend unemployment benefits, but we want them paid for, because there are so many things that the Democrats lard onto it, whether it be for hiring new teachers or other programs, so they keep adding onto it to force us to vote yes.

And I’m proud that we’ve stood up and said “No”, you give us a straight bill, we’ll vote for it but addin’ on all that pork and earmark stuff that caused us to lose before, we’re not doing that any more.

What I would do is to give our small businesses a tax break. I would tell the corporations which are very important, like Intel and Raytheon and others in our state, we’ll cut the corporate tax rates so that you won’t have to send jobs overseas. We’ll continue… I’ll continue to support the military and our bases and the men and women who are there and the thousands of employees, including our people over in Mesa that make the Apache helicopter and down at Raytheon that make these wonderful missiles and Intel that’s doing such a great job in employing so many people that I’ve supported for so many years.

And I’m proud to have had their support and I’m grateful, very grateful to them.