McCain's Straight Talking Express is now flip-flopping

Republican presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaks during a town hall meeting and breakfast, Monday, Feb. 19, 2007, in Sun City, S.C. (AP Photo/Stephen Morton)

I was watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night, and Olbermann brought up a wonderful story on Arizona Senator John McCain, and his flip-flopping stance on Iraq. For now it appears that John McCain is blaming Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for the disastrous war in Iraq. Here is what Olbermann had to say about McCain:

There is more than one way for a presidential candidate to be both for and against the war in Iraq, and in our third story on the Countdown tonight, Senator John McCain may have settled on the most cynical one yet.

Choosing, as his villain -- as the quintessential representative of all that is wrong with the war -- not the current commander-in-chief, but rather a man no longer in office: former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Campaigning in South Carolina, Mr. McCain continued to express strong support for President Bush's troop escalation, but of the former Secretary of Defense, he said, "we are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement - that's the kindest word I can give you - of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war. ... I think Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history."

Indeed, as far back as December of 2004 the Senator said he had "no confidence" in Mr. Rumsfeld...

Though when Rumsfeld resigned last November, Mr. McCain managed some kind words in a statement, "while Secretary Rumsfeld and I have had our differences, he deserves Americans' respect and gratitude for his many years of public service."

But McCain's other stances on the war are not so easily finessed. A little more than two weeks ago he managed to say, within the span of one minute, that judging the troop escalation would be possible in a few months time -- but it would not be possible in a few months time.

Telling ABC's George Stephanopoulos that to "somehow assume that in a few months, that things are going to get all better I think is not realistic."

Then just 47 seconds later, "I think in the case of the Iraqi government cooperating and doing what’s necessary, we can know fairly well in a few months."

He may want to review his pronouncements on the war.

Here is the video of the McCain story.

Talk about McCain's Straight-Talking Express here. McCain is getting caught within his own straight-jacket of his contradictory statements here. What is so ironic about this latest contradiction is that McCain is under intense criticism for his unwavering support of the Bush troop surge by Democrats, moderates and independents, of which McCain will need the moderate and independent vote during the general election. And yet, McCain still needs to pander to hard-lined conservatives and Religious Right to get enough votes to win the Republican nomination--even though some of those same hard-liners question McCain's commitment to the extreme conservative stance on the social issues. Which is why we've seen McCain reverse himself on issues as abortion, tax cuts, on torture, on campaign finance reform--the list is endless. It is all about presidential politics here. McCain wants to be president so badly, that the rot of his presidential ambitions have destroyed whatever values and mores may be left inside McCain's mind. There is no morality within John McCain--only crass, political desire for the White House. And the more this rot of presidential ambition consumes McCain, the more his credibility, as a viable candidate, is destroyed.

I'd like to give a little tribute to "Maverick" Senator John McCain's Straight-Talking, Flip-Flopping Express. Here's a nice little song from Paul Simon to show just where your credibility is going now Senator:



We've got a long way to go until 2008.

A little update here: It appears that Vice President Dick Cheney is playing attack dog on McCain's statement about Rumsfeld. This is on Yahoo News:

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday challenged GOP presidential hopeful John McCain's assertion that Donald H. Rumsfeld was one of the country's worst defense secretaries.

"John's entitled to his opinion. I just think he's wrong," said Cheney, a friend of Rumsfeld. He also disclosed that the Arizona senator had apologized to him for a previous comment that the vice president had "badly served" President Bush on Iraq.

"John said some nasty things about me the other day, and then next time he saw me, ran over to me and apologized. Maybe he'll apologize to Rumsfeld," Cheney said in an interview with ABC News.

McCain's campaign declined to comment on Cheney's remarks.

Despite having low job approval numbers overall, the vice president continues to be very popular among rank-and-file Republicans, and many of them are likely to vote in next year's GOP presidential caucuses and primaries.

McCain, who lost the Republican nomination to Bush in 2000, is expected to formally announce his second run for the White House next month. He faces strong challenges from Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, and Rudy Giuliani, the ex-mayor of New York.

On the campaign trail this week, McCain has talked at length with voters about Iraq and defended his staunch support of Bush's 21,500-troop buildup there while criticizing the way the war has been handled.

"We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement — that's the kindest word I can give you — of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war," McCain said in Hilton Head Island, S.C., on Monday. "The price is very, very heavy and I regret it enormously."

"I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history," McCain added.

Rumsfeld stepped down last year after a rocky six-year tenure.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney waves to U.S. forces in Japan before his address aboard the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier, at Yokosuka Naval Base, home to the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet, in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo, Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2007. Cheney reaffirmed the Bush administration's commitment to the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq during a visit to the U.S. aircraft carrier Wednesday, saying 'the American people will not support a policy of retreat.' (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

A former defense secretary himself, Cheney was asked about McCain's comments while on the USS Kitty Hawk at the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan. He called Rumsfeld a great secretary.

"I know a little bit about the job. I've watched what he's done over there for six years. I think he did a superb job in terms of managing the
Pentagon under extraordinarily difficult circumstances," Cheney said. "He and John McCain had a number of dustups over policy, didn't have anything to do with Iraq."

Last month, McCain blamed both Cheney and Rumsfeld for a "terribly mishandled" war.

"The president listened too much to the vice president . . . Of course, the president bears the ultimate responsibility, but he was very badly served by both the vice president and, most of all, the secretary of defense," McCain was quoted as telling The Politico, a Capitol Hill newspaper and Web site.

A few days later, Cheney said, McCain approached him on the Senate floor, said he had been quoted out of context and offered an apology.

"I was happy to accept," Cheney said.

It seems to me that this is a feigned anger against McCain by the Bush administration. First, Cheney doesn't specifically state that the Bush administration believes that McCain is wrong about Rumsfeld, but rather that Dick Cheney himself believes that McCain is wrong about Rumsfeld, thus taking the administration out of this little squabble. And second, it seems rather ironic that McCain would start laying the blame of Iraq on Rumsfeld, rather than on the entire Bush administration. Don Rumsfeld is the scapegoat here. John McCain can distance himself from the Bush administration on Iraq to help his presidential ambitions by blaming Rumsfeld for the disaster. The administration can certainly feign their anger at McCain, but would perfectly be willing to allow Rumsfeld to take the fall for Iraq, thus removing some of the Iraq war criticism on the current PNAC neocons that still reside in the White House--Cheney, Elliot Abrams, and Paul Wolfowitz for example. You could almost say that this is a manufactured political controversy that helps both John McCain, and the Bush administration.