First off, I’d like to express my shock and sorrow at the school shooting in Illinois, and for the other shootings that have happened in the past few days. My thoughts are with everybody affected. I’ll get to it more closely in another entry.

But first, John McCain. The adamantly anti-torture, maverick Senator, Presidential candidate, and the subject of dislike by conservative talk radio hosts everywhere is getting a lot of flack in the blogosphere for voting against a bill that recently passed bill that bars the CIA from employing waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques.

I call pandering. Pandering when he doesn’t really need to pander. Pandering to a segment of the party that doesn’t need pandering to. Come on McCain, you’ve got a majority of the delegates, and if Romney really can get his to vote for you, you’ve more or less have this nomination clinched. I know some say this is in preparation for the general election, but I still call it pandering. McCain needn’t have worried about the general. He might have had a hill to climb to do it, but with the Independent, moderate, and conservative Democrat vote, he has a chance of winning.

Now this vote will come back to haunt him in the general, you just wait. And some of those Independents and like-minded Democrats that supported him?  They’re gone.  And you know what? Now you really will need the support of those talk radio hosts if you want to win.

I’ve expressed some McCain love here at Dymersion, but this vote seriously impacts my view of him as a favored candidate. I haven’t yet explicitly thrown my support beyond any one candidate. Readers will note my particular like for both McCain and Obama, and to some extent, Clinton (though, like McCain, she’s portrays a grumpy old person), and probably won’t until after the conventions, unless something helps me decide more clearly before then. However, I must say, I’m not happy.

Do I think McCain would actually support this bill in practice? Some bloggers are saying that McCain has shown his true colors by this action, but I disagree. This is pandering to get votes, straight and simple. In office, though, he’d probably reject it. However, whether or not he really believes his vote is not the issue here. What is the issue is a man going again his own strongly held beliefs to capture a vote he probably doesn’t really even need to win the general election.

For shame John McCain, for shame.