And Champion of flip-flops. So many of them that he wins the gold.
And Champion of flip-flops. So many of them that he wins the gold.
“**Mitt Romney: Champion of Big Government**
And Champion of flip-flops. So many of them that he wins the gold.”
Romney is at least six times more likely to be described as a flip-flopper than McCain.) This does not merely ignore but actually inverts the truth.
The fact is that no presidential candidate in either party has flip-flopped as egregiously as McCain on such a wide range of issues. Here’s just a small sample of Sen. Straight Talk’s recent series of remarkable conversions to politically convenient stances:
On abortion rights, McCain has done a 180-degree turn, from favoring only the most minor restrictions and opposing the overturning of Roe v. Wade, to supporting an almost total ban, while advocating that the Supreme Court reverse Roe immediately.
McCain has transformed himself from a deficit hawk who mocked supply-side economics into someone who sounds like he’s drunk deeply from the wackiest vats of supply-side Kool-Aid, to the point where he now claims raising taxes decreases revenues (a claim so wildly in conflict with the facts — for example, federal tax revenues almost doubled in real terms after the Clinton tax increases
— that it’s either a shameless lie or a product of astounding ignorance).” Raising taxes does decrease revenue, it certainly can.
But anyway,
“In regard to ethanol subsidies, McCain has gone from treating them as the worst sort of pork to becoming a strong supporter of a program despised by economists, but beloved of Iowa farmers and the good people at Archer Daniels Midland. Six years ago, McCain sternly condemned Jerry Falwell as
‘an agent of intolerance.’
Eighteen months ago, he gave the commencement address at Falwell’s university, while openly embracing one of the most noxious figures of the religious right.”
Now, this is a guy from the Scripps Howard News Service, Paul Campos, from whose piece I’m reading here.
“These are just a few examples from a far longer list. On topics ranging from immigration, to campaign finance reform, to gay marriage, to accepting support from various sleazy characters he previously shunned, McCain has either completely reversed his views or seriously equivocated regarding what they are this week. Yet the media continue to lavish him with worshipful paeans to his supposedly uncompromising commitment to principled leadership no matter what the political cost etc., etc.
Part of this is accounted for by lazy autopilot journalism ...
But part of it is something worse. When it comes to McCain, many of the sophisticates at the top of the media pyramid are like a masochistic spouse who treats open infidelity as a twisted sort of faithfulness. They love McCain because when he lies to their face he doesn’t even pretend to be doing otherwise. According to the pretzel logic of a certain kind of journalism, that counts as candor.”
When you openly lie to a journalist you’re being honest about your lie, then that’s candor.
“All this would be merely amusing if McCain were not a genuinely tragic figure. The young man who showed such exemplary courage in the face of his North Vietnamese tormentors has become an old man whose courage abandoned him when subjected to the more subtle tortures of worldly ambition.”
Paul Campos is a law professor at the University of Colorado and this appeared in the Scripps Howard News Service on January 22nd.