Last week, we wondered how it was that McCain had taken a highly principled stand against tarring Obama with the views of Wright -- who was, after all, his pastor -- but was going to town tarring Obama with the views of William Ayers, an ex-radical who seems to have been a fairly casual acquaintance, and Hamas, which said Obama would be a good president.
It seems that McCain, over the weekend, had the same question. So now, he's gone for the unprincipled but internally consistent approach -- greenlighting guilt-by-association attacks based on Wright, as well as Hamas and Ayers. Like Hillary, he wants to talk about issues that matter to the American people -- and what could matter more than opportunities to smear your opponent?
Back when the Wright controversy first broke, McCain declared it off limits -- at least in part because he was facing some associational criticism for having accepted an endorsement from anti-Catholic preacher John Hagee. Last week, when North Carolina's Republican party unveiled an ad that used video of Wright to try to discredit two NC gubernatorial candidates who support Obama, McCain denounced it.
Over the weekend, however, another GOP Wright-related ad surfaced in Mississippi (see it after the jump), and Obama in an interview called Wright "a legitimate issue." McCain took the opportunity to shift his stance:
"I won't continue to try to be the referee here....I have said that I will not have any comment on it and that’s because I thought and I believe that Sen. Obama does not share those views. But Sen. Obama himself says it’s a legitimate political issue, so I would imagine that many other people will share that view, and it’ll be in the arena.”
So, the modified McCain view seems to be that he'll confine himself to guilt-by-association attacks based on leftist radicals and Hamas, and profess to be incapable of keeping other Republicans from attacking on Wright. Notably: He said he hasn't personally tried to contact the NC state party, and has no plans to punish them if they go ahead with the ad.
In other McCain news: Despite his claims of repentance following the Charles Keating mess, it turns out he has been scurrying around Washington doing favors for a big real estate developer from Arizona, Donald Diamond, who has been contributing lots of money. He has been using corporate jets controlled by his very wealthy second-wife beer heiress Cincy to skirt some of the same campaign finance rules that he himself sponsored.
He seems to be doing an awfully good job early on of dispelling the notion that he's any more principled than any other Washington politician, doesn't he??