4 Comments Add your own

• 1. Matt DiBari  |  June 19th, 2008 at 8:24 pm

  HOPE AND CHANGE

  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

• 2. Joe  |  June 20th, 2008 at 9:28 am

  Regarding the public financing:
  Obama has had over 1.5 million individual donors… 90% of which have given an average of $100. Shouldn’t an election be about getting the average American person involved? What was best for his campaign was to use these small individual donors.
  What was best for McCain’s campaign was to take the public cash.

  By the way… Who said this?

  I think it’s wonderful that Howard Dean was able to use the Internet, $50, $75, $100 contributions. That’s what we want it to be all about. We want average citizens to contribute small amounts of money, and that’s a commitment to a campaign. So I’m for that. I think it’s a great thing. I think the Internet is going to change American politics for the better.
  — John McCain 2004

  As for your comment that Obama’s “change” was about his “prerogative to change his mind, memberships, mentors, commitments, etc.”
  Really….. do you want to talk about “changing your mind”, or flip-flopping, or “evolving your belief”?

  Let’s see a few of what “The Maverick” has “changed/evolved/flipped” on, shall we?

  Religious zealots?

  2000:
  Sen. John McCain labeled several Christian conservative leaders as “agents of intolerance”

  2006:
  Commencement address at Liberty University.

  March 20th:
  In the New York Times Magazine this weekend, controversial Pastor John Hagee tells Deborah Solomon that, “it’s true that [John] McCain’s campaign sought my endorsement.”

  May 22nd:
  “Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them. I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee’s endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well,” McCain said in a statement to CNN Thursday.

  Tax cuts?

  2001:
  “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief.”

  January 6th:
  SEN. McCAIN: …unless we cut spending then, then we are going to end up in a - the serious situation we’re in today. I will cut spending. And I will continue to support making the tax cuts permanent, which I’ve voted already twice.
  MR. RUSSERT: But you voted the third time for the tax cuts, but there weren’t spending cuts.
  SEN. McCAIN: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. No, but I thought that we ought to keep the tax cuts permanent because if we had increased taxes, which that would have had the effect of, if I had voted in the other way…

  Torture?

  On October 3rd, 2005, he introduced the McCain Detainee Amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill for 2005. Two days later the United States Senate voted 90-9 to pass the amendment which prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, by limiting interrogations to the methods detailed in the US military’s Field Manual

  He voted against the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2008 on February 13th. The bill was hotly debated because it would make it illegal for US intelligence agencies to use interrogation techniques that are forbidden by the military’s guidelines. President Bush has threatened to veto the legislation and McCain lined up with 38 other Republican Senators, one Democrat, and his good friend independent Joe Lieberman to vote against it. In the debate McCain argued somewhat bizarrely that while he strongly opposes torture he is unwilling to apply the military’s standards to the intelligence agencies.

  Abortion?

  1999:
  I’d love to see a point where it is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations.

  2008:
  I don’t think a constitutional amendment is probably going to take place, but I do believe that it’s very likely or possible that the Supreme Court should — could overturn Roe v. Wade, which would then return these decisions to the states, which I support.

  Jobs in Michigan?

  Leading up to the Michigan primary McCain said he didn’t want to raise “false hopes that somehow we can bring back lost jobs,” adding that it” wasn’t government’s job to protect buggy factories and haberdashers when cars replaced carriages and men stopped wearing hats.”

  June 5th: McCain has taken a lesson from Romney, acknowledging recently that “Americans are hurting.” Returning to Michigan last month, the Arizona senator told a local television station that he would fight for new jobs and the state wouldn’t “be left behind.”

  Katrina responsibility?

  In 2005 and 2006 he twice voted against a commission to study the government’s response to Katrina. He also opposed three separate emergency funding measures providing relief to Katrina victims, including the extension of five months of Medicaid benefits.

  June 4th: “I’ve supported every investigation and ways of finding out what caused the tragedy. I’ve been here to New Orleans. I’ve met with people on the ground.”

  Everglades protection?

  McCain not only opposed $2 billion in funding for the restoration of the Everglades national park, he backed President Bush’s veto of the legislation in 2007. “I believe,” he said, “that we should be passing a bill that will authorize legitimate, needed projects without sacrificing fiscal responsibility.”

  June 5th: “I am in favor of doing whatever’s necessary to save the Everglades.”

  Oil drilling?

  During his last run for the presidency, in 1999, McCain supported the drilling moratorium, and he scolded the “special interests in Washington” that sought offshore drilling leases. Yesterday, he announced that those very same “moratoria should be lifted” and proposed incentives for the states “in the form of tangible financial rewards, if the states decide to lift those moratoriums.”

  If you don’t like politicians “changing”, then please dislike it on BOTH sides and not just that it is ok depending if an R or a D follows the person’s name.

• 3. Geoff  |  June 21st, 2008 at 4:45 am

  Joe, the issue is not whether or not public or private financing “works for” Sen. Obama. (Personally, I think public-financing is another in a long line of forlorn liberal ideas meriting the ash-heap.) The issue in this is that Sen. Obama had previously pledged unequivocally to do one thing and then, when convenient for him (as you seem to admit), equivocated and ultimately did an about-face. That deceit is unbecoming someone who so adamantly extols his new political virtue.

  Regarding the flips you listed of Sen. McCain’s, I made a mistake including Sen. Obama’s reconsideration of his pledge to meet with America’s enemies without precondition. Such is—I hope—an instance of Sen. Obama realizing the absurdity of one of his views and then prudently rethinking it. After all, an inclination to meet with America’s enemies without hesitation is a precipice Americans need him to walk away from and not over.

  The difference between the “change” I wrote of and the changes you so extensively highlighted of Sen. McCain’s is that the latter’s changes regarded positions on evolving issues of relevance. For example, Sen. McCain may have opposed tax-cuts he believed to be unfair in 2001 (a position I fully disagreed with) but after years of steadily increasing government revenues brought by the cuts he has come to conclude that raising taxes in 2008 is not the best idea, especially with an economy that is short of breath. Regarding drilling, he opposed extensive new drilling in his first run for President but with over $4/gallon gas in 2008 has concluded that more supply is needed to meet the pressures of increased demand, especially as new technology allows us to tap into that additional supply in a safer way than we could have previously. His change on this issue has coincided with the American people’s.

  Sen. Obama’s changes on the other hand regard both promises made and subsequently broken to voters and sudden rejections as a candidate for president of intimate connections he has had for decades. These raise questions about what kind of person Sen. Obama really is and what kind of core principles he is actually guided by. How can something be so foundational to him one day and then out the window the next?

• 4. Ambrose  |  June 22nd, 2008 at 8:28 am

  Barak Obama changes direction faster than a cat in a shower stall. He’s the most unstable candidate we’ve seen in years… however much his sheep love him.

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