It wasn't McCain's military service we had in mind. It was his penchant for head-spinning dishonesty, like this:
Remember those days of yore, when John McCain was a man who put principle over partisan politics, somebody who could be counted upon to speak the truth?John McCain doesn't.
Yesterday, McCain began the Republican assault on health care reform by proposing to strip the Senate bill of its proposed $487 billion in Medicare reductions. The "unspecified" reductions, McCain said, would "directly impact the health care of citizens in this country":
All of these are cuts in the obligations that we have assumed and are the rightful benefits that people have earned... I will eagerly look forward to hearing from teh authors of this legislation as to how they can possibly achieve half a trillion dollars in cuts without impacting existing Medicare programs negatively and eventually lead to rationing of health care in this country.
It's a bit rich for McCain to make this argument, given that it was just a little more than a year ago McCain himself, as a presidential candidate, was calling for substantially larger Medicare cuts. As Igor Volsky explains over at Wonk Room:
In October 2008, the McCain campaign announced that the Senator would pay for his health plan “with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid…in a move that independent analysts estimate could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs.” Those cuts would have reduced Medicare and Medicaid spending by as much as 20% over 10 years and cut into benefits.
Perhaps McCain reversed himself so many times in his pursuit of the presidency that he honestly doesn't remember what he stands for. At least Democrats aren't letting him get away with it.
