Obama Praises McCain on Reform

5 Comments »

1. I’d love to see the rest of this clip, too! Does it say when this occured?

   Comment by Steve Flesher — September 23, 2008 @ 2:02 am - September 23, 2008

2. A smell an October commercial!

   Comment by American Elephant — September 23, 2008 @ 3:42 am - September 23, 2008

3. Back in 2006 before he started his run for the Presidency.

   I think shortly after he finally found where the bathrooms where in the Capitol building.

   Comment by annon — September 23, 2008 @ 9:06 am - September 23, 2008

4. When I saw that on Powerline, I linked it on my Facebook page. Like you and Steve, a friend of mine also wondered what preceeds and/or follows that clip. (She’s a big Obama supporter, FWIW.)

   On the one hand, I suppose Sen. Obama was just speaking nicely about Sen. McCain because, well, that’s what most politicians do when speaking about other politicians when not in campaign mode. I think it’s pretty traditional to speak well of your opposition when you are able to.

   On the other hand, until Sen. McCain gained the upper hand in the GOP primaries, he was the “good” Republican. Certainly, this was still true back in 2006, when opposition to Pres. Bush was about at its peak. (To be sure, I don’t think it’s lessened since then, but I don’t think it’s increased either.) Sen. McCain was often cited by Democrats and the MSM as the type of Republican other Republicans should aspire to. For better or worse, he had a legitimate bipartisan record and a willingness to take on his own party, and so long as McCain wasn’t looking to derail the Dems chances of regaining the White House, they had no problem being his cheerleader. Then, once it became clear that McCain would be the only roadblock to taking back the White House, revisionist history set in. (Of course, we’ve seen that before, with Democrats’ hard words against Iraq, not only those said in 2002 but also in the late 90’s, being basically airbrushed away.) Now, he’s no longer the enduring reformer. Instead, he’s painted as an out-of-touch geezer who apparently still lives in 1982. Instead of being the guy praised for taking on his own party, people pretend he’s just one of them.

   Has Sen. McCain changed? Hardly. Sure, he supports the GOP view on issues like abortion and the GWOT, but he always has. In the past, this was apparently okay because he had a different way of going about it than his colleagues did. Now though, the same positions are unacceptable. He opposed Bush’s tax cuts, but he has generally opposed higher taxes, so the fact that he’s fine with keeping the tax cuts is hardly a flip-flop. Times change, circumstances change, and there’s no reason why one needs to keep the same position on tax cuts now as one did half a decade ago. Ditto his position on off-shore drilling—with energy prices where they are, it seems appropriate to reconsider one’s opposition to it. Democrats may have fooled themselves into believing he was a liberal Republican, and they may now fool themselves into believing he’s suddenly morphed into a staunchly conservative Republican, but the truth is, McCain has been a nominally conservative Republican with a reformist streak for a long, long time. His only fundamental change is that he is now the GOP’s nominee for President. The Obama campaign knows that and obviously is doing everything they can to keep the public from seeing it.

   Comment by cme — September 23, 2008 @ 4:32 pm - September 23, 2008

5. That’s not the Comrade Obama he thought he knew.

   Comment by ThatGayConservative — September 23, 2008 @ 8:06 pm - September 23, 2008

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