This is a fun one: John McCain is attacking a new pro-Dem third party group because it's being partly funded by George Soros -- even though a group McCain co-chaired took one hundred and fifty thousand dollars from Soros, too.

Yesterday, McCain sent out a fundraising email blasting the new Soros-funded Dem effort.

"George Soros the `liberal megadonor' is at it again," McCain campaign manager Rick Davis wrote, sounding the "Soros" alarm in a way guaranteed to get right-wingers to open their wallets. "He and his group of billionaire left-wing Democrats have pledged $40 million dollars of soft money to smear John McCain in a national television ad campaign."

But it turns out that Soros' charitable foundation, the Open Society Institute, gave $150,000 to a group called the Reform Institute, which is dedicated to campaign-finance reform and transparency in government, an OSI spokesperson confirms. The grant was made in 2003.

McCain was honorary co-chair of the Reform Institute starting in 2001, when the group was founded, and held that post until 2005.

It gets better.

It also turns out that the author of the fundraising letter attacking Soros -- McCain campaign manager Rick Davis -- was president of the Reform Institute from 2001-2005, the Institute spokesperson says.

So McCain and Davis are now attacking a nascent Dem effort because it's being partly funded by Soros -- even though a group that had McCain as honorary co-chair and Davis as president took $150,000 from Soros.

As The Huffington Post's Sam Stein, who reported this first, puts it:

"The man Rick Davis believes funds `baseless left-wing projects' has not only funded McCain's own organization...but also portions of Rick Davis' salary."

Nonetheless, the larger story here is what this reveals about McCain's ideological shift over the years. In 2001 McCain's desire to reform campaign finance effectively aligned him with Soros. Now that he's running for president seven years later, McCain has been reduced to using the Soros bugaboo to wheedle money out of the right.