McCain Breaking Campaign Promises Already

The Real McCain is already breaking campaign promises:

As recently as this morning, McCain again told reporters that he planned on returning to the Senate for this evening’s vote on the economic stimulus, stating that Congress needed to quickly pass legislation.

The measure, blocked by conservatives, fell just one vote short of the 60 needed to end debate. At the “last minute,” McCain decided to skip the vote, even though his plane landed in DC in time. McCain claimed that he was “too busy“:

“I haven’t had a chance to talk about it at all, have not had the opportunity to, even,” McCain said. “We’ve just been too busy, focused on other stuff. I don’t know if I’m doing that. We’ve got a couple of meetings scheduled.”

Both Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) were able to return to the Senate and vote on the bill.

The reason for breaking this promise and allowing his GOP to filibuster the stimulus package? McCain was afraid to offend the craziest and most wingnutty wackos in his party:

Voting “no” with Republican leaders would have offended millions of Social Security recipients and the disabled veterans not scheduled to receive rebates. Voting “yes,” on the other hand, risked alienating Bush, GOP leaders and conservatives already suspicious of McCain’s political leanings. McCain was speaking Thursday before a meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, a group that booed him last year in absentia.

If he can't stand up to the Republican terrorists in his own GOP's base, you can be certain that even the mention of the words "al Qaeda" will make him wet his pants. Those words seem to have that effect on a lot of conservatives these days, so no surprise about that one... Never mind that he turned his back on the elderly and disabled veterans because he is a scared little old man.