McCain Was a Maverick Before He Wasn’t

Republicans are using the 2004 playbook, thinking they can pin the flip-flopper label on Obama, as they did with John Kerry. The problem with this is that their candidate is John McCain. John McCain today wouldn’t even support legislation with his name on it, such as McCain-Kennedy or McCain-Feingold. Steve Bennen at Carpetbagger Report has a list of 61 McCain flip flops.

Here are just the first six, on his supposed strong-suit, national security: 

1. McCain thought Bush’s warrantless-wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.

2. McCain insisted that everyone, even “terrible killers,” “the worst kind of scum of humanity,” and detainees at Guantanamo Bay, “deserve to have some adjudication of their cases,” even if that means “releasing some of them.” McCain now believes the opposite.

3. He opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

4. In February 2008, McCain reversed course on prohibiting waterboarding.

5. McCain was for closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay before he was against it.

6. When Barack Obama talked about going after terrorists in Pakistani mountains with predators, McCain criticized him for it. He’s since come to the opposite conclusion.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.