From Pine View Farm

McFlip Flop 0

He’s ready to lock us ’em up and throw away the McKey.

Glenn Greenwald:

On Wednesday, I documented John McCain’s complete reversal of views — in the last six months alone — on FISA, warrantless eavesdropping and executive power. McCain’s diametrically opposite views were contained in a questionnaire McCain completed for The Boston Globe last December (wherein he rejected many of the Bush/Cheney theories of presidential omnipotence and warrantless eavesdropping) and then a statement McCain issued this week to National Review (wherein he embraced those same theories in order to persuade the Right that he approves of and would continue Bush’s lawless surveillance policies).

(snip)

There are two critical conclusions highlighted by this episode: (1) whether McCain embraces the Bush/Cheney/Yoo theories of the omnipotent executive is, far and away, one of the most vital questions of the campaign, since the vast bulk of the radicalism and accompanying controversies of the last eight years — from spying to detention to torture to extreme government secrecy — arise out of those theories; despite that fact, those issues have been missing almost entirely from the media’s coverage of the campaign — until now; and (2) despite how central these issues have been, McCain is simply incapable of forming a coherent position on what he thinks about any of this, dramatically changing his answers almost from one day to the next depending on who is asking. This behavior, culminating in his embrace this week of the Bush/Cheney/Yoo theories, severely undermines the two attributes the media relentlessly uses to depict him — his “moderate” ideology and his straight-talking, principled independence.

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