McCain: Before Reform Before He Was Against It

McCain: Before Reform Before He Was Against It

Faster than you can say flip-flop, McCain turns himself inside out.

ThinkProgress busts the former straight talker, turned Bush butt-kisser.

BILL MOYERS: Senator, in your home state of Arizona,
a number of candidates recently were elected to office running with public
funding, public financing. Would you support it? Would you endorse, what do
you think about that experiment there?

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: I think it’s good overall.
I think it needs to, like any other new experiment, it needs to have some
wrinkles taken out of it. But we had more people run for public office than
any time in the history of our state, and that’s what it was all about.
As I say, there’s some fixes that need to be made, but it was a new
experiment, and overall I think was very successful and interestingly the
ones who are running, you know what they’re telling me? They said, surprise,
surprise, I spend my time talking to voters not to contributors.

BILL MOYERS: Do you think that could become a model
for the nation as a whole?

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Absolutely.

Now, he is refusing to even discuss public
financing and attacking others for even considering it. From yesterday’s
The
Hill:

The public financing of campaigns does not have —
at least to this point — the support of the Senate’s leading advocate
for campaign-finance reform, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

McCain dismissed the proposal yesterday with a flat
“no.”

… McCain said he did not understand the new fervor
among Democrats for taxpayer-financed campaigns…

What a difference presidential ambition can make.