Wednesday, September 17, 2008

John W. McBush's Greatest Flip-Flops

Another hat tip goes out to Michael Morrill for this...

On "The View" (last Monday), McCain challenged Joy Behar to name an issue he's flip-flopped on. ThinkProgress found 42 (from here).

The flip-flop
document notes that McCain has changed his position even on the four areas he cited — spending, climate change, the war in Iraq, and torture of prisoners:

SPENDING: The McCain campaign has said that it will balance the budget by the end of McCain’s first time. But chief economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said McCain would balance the budget by the end of his second term.

CLIMATE CHANGE: In 1999, McCain opposed lifting the ban on offshore drilling, saying that it was just the “special interests in Washington” that advocated it. In 2008, McCain announced that “there are areas off our coasts that should be open to exploration and exploitation.”

IRAQ CONDUCT: He said in 2004 that Donald Rumsfeld was doing “a fine job” and was “an honorable man.” But by 2008, McCain was arguing that he was “the only one that said Rumsfeld had to go.”

TORTURE: In 2005, McCain pushed President Bush to sign a bill that would prohibit “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone in U.S. government custody. But in 2008, McCain voted against the Intelligence Authorization Bill, which requires the intelligence community to abide by the same standards as articulated in the Army Field Manual and bans waterboarding.
Steve Benen has compiled another flip-flop list here.

Update: By the way, in the prior post with all of the YouTube links, the very first bullet actually does take you to a video even though I have it accidentally marked as deleted - I'd go back and change it, but Blogger lost all of my delete edits and I don't feel like going back and making them again.

No comments: