Republicans And Jonh McCain In A Nutshell

Think of what McCain said during the Republican primaries, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." Sums him up perfectly.

Via Washinton Monthly:

"[In 1999], McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country's financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.

That bill allowed AIG to participate in the gold rush of a rapidly expanding global banking and investment market. But the legislation also helped pave the way for companies such as AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments.

McCain now condemns the executives at those companies for pursuing the ambitions that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act made possible."

In other words, McCain personally gave the financial industry a green light to do exactly what they did. And now he's outraged. McSame is tring to reinvent himself on the fly.

It's precisely why McCain's economic message has been so oddly incoherent this week. Turning on a dime, he's gone from supporting fewer regulations to supporting more, from supporting less oversight to supporting more. McCain is slamming Wall Street execs for playing a dangerous game after McCain helped throw out the rules.

This is the mind of a 72 year old man who never had to be consistent, he could always play the outsider roll. But when you change your position so many times that "flip-flip" is a vast understatement, you just look like you'll say or do anything to get elected.

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