Flashback: McCain Endorsed Negotiating With Hamas Two Years Ago
It turns out there could be a big problem with John McCain's charge that Barack Obama is unfit to be president on the basis of his desire to negotiate with hostile foreign leaders. In fact, McCain was saying very much the same thing two years ago -- and it was about Hamas, a group Obama hasn't proposed dealing with, but one that McCain has nevertheless gone out of his way to associate with Obama.
Jamie Rubin writes this morning that he interviewed McCain after Hamas won the Palestinian elections, and asked whether American diplomats should work with the new government.
MCain's response: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so ... but it's a new reality in the Middle East."
Late Update: And here's the video:
Flip....flop!!!
He was against Bush's tax cuts...before he was for them.
He was against torture...before he was for it.
He was for diplomacy...before he was against it.
I'd love to see the Democrats revive the stupid GOP ads against Kerry from 2004 and simply splice in new footage of McCain with a new voice-over.
May 16, 2008 8:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Seriously, McCain is just like the weather in Seattle. If you don't like his current political position, wait five minutes.
It's too bad the GOP burned out the flip-flop moniker in 2004. McCain is a LOT worse than Kerry. I'm having a hard time think of a single position where McCain hasn't taken both sides.
May 16, 2008 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I love the intertubes!
They can't get away with shit anymore. I especially love it that McWar is 879 years old and probably never put his fingers on a keyboard in his life and has no clue.
I love it.
The damned old fools just don't get it - you can't get away with this shit any more.
Ha!
May 16, 2008 8:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I was just gonna post: I love the web! Yes, isn't it amazing how politicians simply can't tell lies any more - without being caught???
I love it too!!!
May 16, 2008 9:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's awesome.
And anyone in public life in any capacity ignores the whole thing at their peril.
It's the most powerful tool for exploding bullshit ever. It also disseminates bullshit, but 9 times out of 10, the bullshit eventually gets called.
I just love it.
May 16, 2008 9:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
You and I both!!! It's payback time!!!
May 16, 2008 9:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Who would have thought, YouTube becoming exactly what the founders had envisioned the job of the press of keeping a check on politicians.
May 16, 2008 9:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
McCain Of The Panderosa.
More War Years! More War Years! More War Years!
A vote for The Maverick Of The Panderosa, is like a Vote for the Cowboy from Crawford that rounded him up and branded him.
More War Years! More War Years! More War Years!
May 16, 2008 8:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
McCain is a complete joke. He's flip-flopped on virtually every single issue over the past few years. Every one except Iraq. He still has his rose-colored glasses on for that one.
May 16, 2008 9:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually,
I think McCain just recently flipped on Iraq.
He always opposed setting a deadline to having the Troops out of Iraq, but he just promised a Deadline of
2009 to have the Troops out of there.
That is McCain Of The Panderosa's newest switcheroo.
He just set a deadline, but he will continue to declare that he is against one.
May 16, 2008 9:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
McCain is a complete joke
McWar is completely unfit to be president of anything.
May 16, 2008 9:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
McShame!!!
May 16, 2008 9:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
McSame: Well what I meant was . . . um . . . um . . . 9/11. Yeah . . . 9/11. That's straight talk...
May 16, 2008 9:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
I cant wait for the debates between BO and JM. the moderators are going to paint JM as a flip flopper. Just about every position JM has taken is a revised one and the crazy thing is there is either video tape or written evidence to prove it. I just hope the BO campaign and the DNC forcefully point them out to the public. JM is the oldest flip flopper in US history.
May 16, 2008 9:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Besides... think of all the potential debate mistakes! The ability to recall new facts and analyze does not get better in old age!
May 16, 2008 9:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
the moderators are going to paint JM as a flip flopper.
What on earth makes you think McCain's base will turn on him that way?
May 16, 2008 10:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm in a very small minority on this, but I think the general election is going to be much easier than many say it is. Certainly much easier than the primary.
This video -- and the fact that McCain's people hadn't vetted themselves on it -- just confirms my beliefs. These clowns have no grasp of how the playing field has changed in our post-YouTube politics.
There will be a few bumps and stumbles, but Obama will roll this fool.
May 16, 2008 9:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm with you, Lamont.
Like I said yesterday: I have been feeling for some time like a cat stuck behind window glass watching a particularly dim-witted squirrel wander fecklessly around just on the other side of the glass.
I can't wait for that window to open...
May 16, 2008 9:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think that's right. Frankly, I think Democrats and Republicans are going to be surprised at the Obama that emerges from the Democratic Primary. I think he's been holding back. We'll get a sense of it today when he responds to Bush's comments.
May 16, 2008 9:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah thats the thing, it seems as if the McCain campaign hasnt fully vetted and done opposition research on their own candidate. they obviously are unaware of the things he has said in the past.
May 16, 2008 9:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
The candidate or who's working for the campaign. Has he rolled out the Ready on Day One motto yet?
May 16, 2008 9:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Shhhhh! Don't remind them!
More to the point, this is exactly why Senators have had trouble running for president since 1960. They have long histories of spouting off on issues and have often cast thousands of votes that can be used against them. While Obama's relatively shorter resume may be a weakness, it is more than off-set by the gems in McCain's history. It's especially bad for an opportunist like John Sidney.
May 16, 2008 9:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed. I've thought of late that the primary turning into such a tinderbox this season is because it *is* the election and everyone knows it on some level. Analysis of primary to primary turnout in this cycle, alongside primary to general in 2k4 - itself a big year for turnout over previous cycles - bears the omen out.
Obama received more votes in WV than McCain on a lopsided loss. While the McCain trolls will certainly rise to state that this is a sign of Clinton's strength and the GOP primary being a settled affair, the numbers are just as pronounced in late January / early February when there was still a contest on their side of the fence.
A great wave has drawn out from shore, and the tsunami will soon come back to wipe them off the map in November.
May 16, 2008 9:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree too! This guy has talked way, way too much!
May 16, 2008 9:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Rachel Maddow stated on Olbermann last night that this (Bush and McCain attacking Obama on a substantive issue0 was like Purim and Christmas all rolled into one. Obama couldn't possibly be happier than to engage this guys on this, particularly since they can't get their stories straight on anything. Obama is going to wipe the floor with this clowns.
May 16, 2008 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Lamont,
Stop with that type of talk. Over confidence in how easy it was going to be was Hillary's biggest mistake.
Hubris tied her shoe laces together, and that caused her to fall flat on her face in Iowa.
Let us not repeat the same mistake in the General Election.
This country reelected the biggest Moron in Presidential history, so expect a very tough fight. It is sheer folly to start taking a victory lap before the race has even started.
Ask Hillary how that worked out for her.
May 16, 2008 10:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, but it's hard not to be confident when I see Charlie Black on the opposing sidelines.
I'm not downplaying the fight we've got coming. I just think Hillary is a much cagier opponent than Grandpa Simpson will be. Obama and his team are on their game and have what it takes to destroy these creeps.
May 16, 2008 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'll go even further... Obama supporters should thank Hillary for putting him through the wringer for the past few months. It's toughened him up. He's ready for the Steel Cage now.
May 16, 2008 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
The McCain Doctrines
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/magazine/18mccain-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=politics&pagewanted=print
Excerpt:
The war in Iraq has tested some of these friendships, however. Last year, after House Democrats voted to set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, McCain and Webb — both of whom were featured heroes in a classic book on the era, Robert Timberg’s “Nightingale’s Song” — became embroiled in an unusually public disagreement. After McCain pointedly said the enemy in Iraq was celebrating along with Democrats, Webb accused him of unfairly questioning other people’s patriotism. When Webb and Hagel (a close personal friend of McCain’s) proposed a bill to give troops leaving Iraq and Afghanistan more time at home before redeploying, McCain, whose 19-year-old son has served with the Marines in Iraq, forcefully opposed them, saying the troops were needed in the theater. More recently, McCain has found himself on the opposite side of Webb and Hagel again, this time over their “G.I. bill” that would offer education money to every returning veteran. McCain and others want a more limited bill that would encourage rank-and-file soldiers to re-enlist rather than return to civilian life.
In these skirmishes, McCain is the outlier. Among his fellow combat veterans in the Senate, past and present, he is the only one who has continued to champion the war in Iraq; by contrast, Kerry, Webb and Hagel have emerged in the years since the invasion as unsparing critics of American involvement there. (In a new book, Hagel, who voiced deep concerns about Iraq even as he voted for the war resolution in 2002, predicts that the war will turn out to be “the most dangerous and costly foreign-policy debacle in our nation’s history.”)
May 16, 2008 9:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
The thing is that his years as a prisoner were lost years. He did not go through what the rest of us did during that time. So he really has no perspective on the problems of the Vietnam era. And thus.... he takes the wrong tracks when trying to learn from that time. How can you learn from what you did not go through??? Ok, he learned from being a prisoner. But that does not apply to politics! (maybe to prison reform)
He's an albatross in this election! The repubs have harnessed themselves to an albatross!
May 16, 2008 9:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Damn you, internet!!! Damn you, videotape!!! Why can't we go back to the days of Woodrow Wilson, when a politician could say what he wanted to say and not have it come back to bite him in his pasty, white, OLD ass!
And yes, I remember the days of Woodrow Wilson very clearly - he was my mentor!
Love,
John McCain
May 16, 2008 9:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dang that was funny....."Old man yells at cloud"
May 16, 2008 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
I just don't get it. Is McCain really this stupid? I keep thinking that he can't possibly be, that this is some sort of tactic or scheme.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) I think he might just be this inept. I think though that I will continue to be skeptical just in case. Better to overestimate than underestimate the opponent.
May 16, 2008 9:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
He's a narcissist. Different type from bush. But believes he's the cat's pajamas! And that is his Achilles heel. He's so pompous he believes that everyone should believe him... because he's defined himself as a straight-talker.
McShame - of Forked Tongue!!!
May 16, 2008 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
McCain of the Panderosa, who has always opposed setting a deadline for getting the Troops out of Iraq, just set such a deadline.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/37175.html
Excerpt:
Matt Stearns | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: May 15, 2008 07:54:24 PM
WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain predicted Thursday that most U.S. troops would be out of Iraq by the end of his first term, leaving behind a fragile but functioning democracy.
"The Iraq war has been won" by January 2013, McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said in a speech outlining what he hoped to accomplish in his first four years.
====================================================
McCain Of The Panderosa.
More War Years! More War Years! More War Years!
A vote for The Maverick Of The Panderosa, is like a Vote for the Cowboy from Crawford that rounded him up and branded him.
More War Years! More War Years! More War Years!
May 16, 2008 9:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
So much for his bearings, Sen. Lieberman.
It was never difficult to confront the lies of these warmongerers. These lies have always been transparent. The problem has always been that few had the courage to expose these lies until now.
These neocon idiots haven't the slightest notion of the size of the new one Obama is gonna rip them.
May 16, 2008 9:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wake up MSM! Start paying attention to the man behind the [smoke] screen.
May 16, 2008 9:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can we also agree that if a Democrat had been whipsawed by a prior statement like this, the press would be full of stories about its amateurish campaign and how they're not ready for prime-time? Package this together with all of McCain's newly discovered dictator lobbyists and the story writes itself.
Waiting for those stories in 5 . . 4. . .
May 16, 2008 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
We're all waiting, big media. Obama is our nominee. You said you'd start digging into McCain when we had a nominee. Any time now....
Write your local and national media outlets. Demand more balanced coverage!
May 16, 2008 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, but... but... 9/11 changed everything!!
May 16, 2008 10:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Side effets of Old, real old age. Two years seems two generations ago.
Kudos Huffo for unearthing something relavent and meaningful...
May 16, 2008 10:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ironically, these comments by Bush and McCain, which were meant to deepen the divide in this country, have led to a unification within the Democratic Party. http://thinmansblog.blogspot.com/
May 16, 2008 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
There's a difference between holding talks with hostile foreign entities (which we have done informally off and on with Iran for some time), and a U.S. president sitting down for a tet-a-tet with Ahmadinejad without any preconditions or diplomatic groundwork, such as Obama can't seem to wait to do. Obama's naive. If we ever elect a community-organizer-in-chief, he's our man. But not commander-in-chief and leader of the free world. No way.
May 16, 2008 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
well, once in law school I brought my pet monkey Thurgood with me to class, but I dressed him up in a little suit and tie. It was really cute : )
anyway, that same day famous Critical Race Studies "scholar" Derrick Bell was visiting the school. So about two dozen people come up and say "welcome Professor Bell." And when Thurgood would start jabbering away, it would take about two to three minutes before people realized, hey! That's not Derrick Bell, that a monkey in a suit!
May 16, 2008 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
What Bush had that McCain doesn't: Karl Rove.
Bush was basically modelling clay that Rove was able to sculpt into the Resolute Decider and Defender of Us. "The Brain" built Bush's persona from scratch, used him as a test of his "51%" theorem, and parlayed fear and swaggering machismo into two terms.
McCain is a settled personality with an attitude, a temper, and the pomposity that only 25 years in the Senate can bestow. He's used to being taken at his word and getting his own way. I think he'll resist being molded and that will be his downfall.
May 16, 2008 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
McCain flip-flops again?!
Color me shocked (not).
Now, if only someone in the MSM could figure out how to use the World-Wide Innernets for something other than finding video of water-skiing squirrels, and apply a little old-school journalism, maybe the rest of our fellow Americans can be better informed...
May 16, 2008 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
I knew Bush wouldn't stay out of it, he thinks (and I use this word loosely) Americans are stupid and the ole smoke and mirrors crap will win the race.
Unfortunately for him Obama (and the primaries) has educated Americans, got us all talking, paying attention and shifting through the BS.
We've learned to find a straw in haystack in the middle of a snow storm with a bikini on. ROTFLMAO
May 16, 2008 11:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sen. McCain, in speaking about Hamas 2 years ago, said "sooner or later, we are going to have to deal with them." President Harry S. Truman (a democrat) "dealt" with the Fascist Empire of Japan in 1945. He used "fat man" and "little boy" and the fascist empire fell. Obama is simply a new version of Neville Chamberlain.
May 16, 2008 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
McCain, like Bush, sickeningly has himself a little chuckle when he speaks about violence.
Can someone explain what that is about? A nervous reaction?
I'm wracking my brain trying to come up with an example in everyday life where someone would giggle about something like that.
May 16, 2008 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink