THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER ENDORSES JOHN MCCAIN

"Sen. John McCain of Arizona is the best Republican candidate for president. Experience? The four-term senator and Vietnam war hero has it all over his opponents. Character? Again, McCain wins hands down. ... McCain, 71, has personal bravery, political courage and a confident sense of how he would lead this country. He's the authentic candidate in a field of wannabes and flip-floppers." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer
Excerpts From "Inquirer's GOP Endorsement For President: McCain"
EditorialThe Philadelphia InquirerJanuary 27, 2008
Sen. John McCain of Arizona is the best Republican candidate for president.
Experience? The four-term senator and Vietnam war hero has it all over his opponents.
Character? Again, McCain wins hands down. He has consistently taken positions he believes in, without regard to political peril.
McCain, 71, has personal bravery, political courage and a confident sense of how he would lead this country. He's the authentic candidate in a field of wannabes and flip-floppers. The Inquirer endorses John McCain for president in the Republican primary.
The GOP race has devolved frequently into a shameless contest to see who can bash illegal immigrants the loudest. McCain, who represents a border state, has resisted this pandering to the Republican base. He supports giving illegals a pathway to citizenship, when taking a harsher position would clearly win him more primary voters.
The former prisoner of war in Vietnam has stood tall against the Bush administration's condoning of torture for enemy combatants. He dared speak out against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's mismanagement of the war in Iraq -- although McCain's willingness to keep U.S. troops there indefinitely is wrong, too.
McCain has shown an ability to learn from mistakes. Accused of intervening on behalf of a campaign contributor in the 1980s' savings and loan scandal, he later took up the banner of campaign finance reform. He waged a lonely battle in his party, pushing through the landmark McCain-Feingold law in 2002.
McCain was among the first in his party to treat global warming as a serious problem. He's also been a consistent fiscal hawk in Congress. ...
[R]omney has tried to be so many things to so many different constituencies, he's left voters with little idea of his core beliefs. Is he pro-choice, as he professed while governor, or pro-life, as he now claims? Is he the candidate who supported gun control in 1994, or the one who now bills himself as a committed friend of the NRA? It's not clear whether even Romney knows the answers. ...
For all these reasons and more, John McCain is clearly the strongest Republican for president.
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