Jake Tapper of ABC reports on McCain’s race problem:

McCain as a young congressman in 1983 voted against a federal holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Most Republicans in the House voted for the holiday (89 voted for the holiday, 77 opposed), though all three Arizona House Republicans were opposed. Reps. Dick Cheney, R-Wyoming, and Newt Gingrich, R-Georgia, voted for the holiday. (Cheney had voted against it in 1978.)

Dick Cheney was able to figure out that Dr. Martin Luther King was someone America should honor by 1984, but he’s a young buck compared to McCain. Sure, times have changed for Old Man McCain. Not only is MLK Day a holiday, but we’ve even had serious African-American presidential candidates. One of them is likely going to be the Democratic nominee in 2008. I hope this isn’t happening at too fast a pace for McCain to adjust.

My guess is we see more repulsive anachronisms from John McCain as journalists (and the Democratic nominee) get around to casting a critical eye on his record. McCain is not who you think he is.  Tapper’s story shows that as last as the 1990s McCain was beholden to the most extreme right-wing elements in his party. The people who that organized against honoring MLK with a holiday. Even Cheney had come around by 1984, and here’s McCain voting against it in 1984, and in 1990 saying he’s for a state amendment and against a national law. John McCain is no moderate. He is not independent minded. He is a reactionary and a neo-conservative who will, in the words of Joe Scarborough, only offer America “less jobs and more wars.” What Scarborough is essentially saying is that McCain offers more of the same thing we’ve seen from the Republican Party under Bush. I don’t know why anyone aware of that fact would be able to stomach it.