Thinkprogress:
Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) spoke to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Memphis to commemorate the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. As ThinkProgress has noted, as a congressman in 1983, McCain voted against legislation creating MLK Day.
Most Republicans (including then-Rep. Dick Cheney) supported the bill, later signed by President Reagan. McCain complained it “cost too much money, that other presidents were not recognized.” He eventually came around to supporting the holiday in a 1990 Arizona referendum that failed.
In his speech today, McCain tried to explain his misguided vote by stating, “We can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing”:
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. We can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans. But he knew as well that in the long term, confidence in the reasonability and good heart of America is always well placed.
During these statements, some in the crowd said, “We forgive you,” but many others began loudly objecting to McCain’s comments. CNN reporter Soledad O’Brien called it “a little bit of heckling.”
Let's go to the video tape folks on McStraight talk from Crooks and Liars:McCain: I voted in my first, I think it was my first year in congress against then… I began to learn and I studied and people talked to me and I not supported it but I fought very hard in my home state of Arizona for recognition against a Governor who was against my own party.
And what else did he say?
“I had not been involved in the issue. I had come from being in the military to running for Congress in a state that did not have a very large African American population and it had not been in issue. It just simply had not been.”
In a February 2000 interview with ABC News, McCain said his initial opposition to a holiday was based on his belief that “it was not necessary to have another federal holiday, that it cost too much money, that other presidents were not recognized.”
1 comment:
This a disgrace when McCain who is 71 years old comes out to give a speech about MLK when all his life he denied Blacks Rights. All this for a vote in hopes the lie sticks. How much could McCain have done in all his years in the Senate to improve the lives of Blacks? Now that he's running for President he says he's learned. It's like letting a man drown and 40 years later saying I learned now I should have helped him. Actions by McCain show he could care less. He didn't change his vote for a MLK Holiday until all the Companies, NBA, NFL, NHL and even Government events boycotted Arizona. With the money that State lost in the first few months it helped McCain change his mine. Now if there was no boycott in Arizona McCain would have not allowed a MLK Holiday in his State. As he says very few Blacks lived in Arizona but he forgot many Blacks fought with him in Vietnam. I guess when your born in 1937 it's hard to remember or keep up with the changes of the times. Now one would think the way McCain's speaks of Blacks they this is 1700's and Blacks are still slaves.
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