Straight Talk

It's nice to see McCain lying about FISA at his CPAC speech.

There are a lot of reasons you can come up with for why John McCain may not be a strong general election candidate. But this is the flipside. Since he has a reputation for straight-talk, he's been granted by the press an unrestricted licenses to lie. It's hard to beat someone with one of those.

Comments

All the more reason to continuously tag him a liar- it's the Carl Rove method- attack your opponent's strength to discredit them.

Posted by alameda | February 7, 2008 3:45 PM

You in general election campaign-mode already, Matt?

Posted by Norway | February 7, 2008 3:57 PM

Matt,

Let not your heart be troubled. The MSM's love affair with John McCain will end as soon as the general election starts, and all of his licenses will be revoked. Count on it. Now, if you haven't fixed it already, correct that mistake ("lie"?) of yours that Kudlow works for the Fox Business Channel.

Posted by Fred | February 7, 2008 4:29 PM

Don't all Republicans get that license? When was the last time any of them ever got called on blatant lies?

Posted by Eric k | February 7, 2008 4:32 PM

Don't all Republicans get that license? When was the last time any of them ever got called on blatant lies?

You're probably too young to remember Richard Nixon. Yes, its been that long.

Posted by The Grand Panjandrum | February 7, 2008 4:40 PM

McCain gets a lot more slack than he deserves, especially on the war. That said: from camapaign-finance reform to immigration to the Bush tax cuts to torture, McCain is usually lauded as a straight-talker when he's sticking his thumb in the eye of the conservative wing of the GOP. "Straight talk" will only have so much force as a narrative when he's running against someone who also disagrees with conservatives on taxes, immigration, campaign-finance reform, etc.

And I'm not sure talk of endless war, coming from a tired and angry old man, can be spun as "straight talk" forever. It's not straight talk, it's calcified militarism. McCain doesn't have the personality to sell it as anything but a grim and bloody responsibility. Against either Hillary or Obama he'll come off as the pessimistic candidate, even though he'll be the one arguing that the US can still succeed in Iraq.

Posted by JB | February 7, 2008 4:43 PM

Another new low for Matt? Calling someone a liar without even attempting to explain exactly what they think is a lie?

Posted by Dave | February 7, 2008 4:58 PM

Perhaps you are mistook. Comrade Sullivan calls it "...a stirring, honest, forthright and properly conservative speech"

Posted by G | February 7, 2008 5:03 PM

Panjan...

True, but even then it took Watergate, he got away with it for what 5 years? before that.

Posted by Eric k | February 7, 2008 5:09 PM

My reading of McCain's speech is that his only mention of FISA was "It is shameful and dangerous that Senate Democrats are blocking an extension of surveillance powers that enable our intelligence and law enforcement to defend our country against radical Islamic extremists." In what sense was this a "lie"?

Posted by ostap | February 7, 2008 5:22 PM

McCain missed the FISA vote two days before the Florida primary and the conservatives missed the opportunity to close the FISA debate FISA. So why is he harping on Obama and Clinton about FISA when he can't even bother to show up and vote on it.

Posted by Sean Cobb | February 7, 2008 5:25 PM

In what sense was this a "lie"?
Posted by ostap | February 7, 2008 5:22 PM

In the sense that it leaves out the fact that the Senate Republicans are blocking it, not the Democrats. You useful idiot.

It is the intransigence of the republican senators on telecom immunity that is holding up the FISA bill.

It's everything or nothing with these right wing fanatics.

Posted by Northern Observer | February 7, 2008 5:29 PM

ostap,
the lie is that is "shameful'. It's actually a good thing.

Posted by Tom in Ma | February 7, 2008 5:38 PM

It is the intransigence of the republican senators on telecom immunity that is holding up the FISA bill.

Huh??? The Senate has already voted, by a 60-vote supermajority, in favor of telecom immunity. It's only been a superminority of Democrats that has been holding up the bill. Romney is correct.

Posted by Al | February 7, 2008 5:43 PM

In a political context, to be a "lie" the statment has to be a bald-faced lie. E.g., McCain re Romney on timetables, or Clinton re Obama on Reagan. This statement by McCain doesn't come close to that standard.

Posted by ostap | February 7, 2008 5:44 PM

In a political context, to be a "lie" the statment has to be a bald-faced lie.

Well, that's not true. In a political context, a "lie" is anything that your opponent says that you happen to disagree with.

Example:
Politician A: Ugly Betty is the best TV show.
Blogger B: Politician A is lying. Clearly The Wire is the best TV show. That the media allows Politician A to get away with these lies shows how in the tank for Politician A the media really is.

See what I mean?

Posted by Al | February 7, 2008 5:55 PM

A1: Your example would be excellent except that clearly The Wire really is the best TV show.

Posted by Flea | February 7, 2008 6:20 PM

not only will mccain lie, but he will do it repeatedly and without shame. it is funny because conservatives know this, but dems seem to be oblivious..
the real issue in the campaign will be whether dems will go after mccain on this issue or whether they will continue to essentially refer to and deal with him as st. john.
it always kills me when dems, like john kerry, fall all over themselves to heap praise on mccain, to be his buddy, while he will not hesitate to put the knife in his so-called friends' backs. it always strikes me as extraordinarily masochistic.
if dems persist in canonizing st. john, as they try to run against him, they will lose.
they need to mount an aggressive, frontal assault on him from this point on. if they want to win.

Posted by frankie d | February 7, 2008 9:03 PM

Senator McCranky will not be hard to beat in a general election -just keep repeating the following statement everywhere:

"John McCain is a decisive man, just like President Bush. If you like the direction the country is going, the Straight Talk Express will go farther and faster down the same path."

That, and make the name Sen. McCranky stick - cartoonish, negative and accurate.

Posted by tommyaquinas | February 7, 2008 9:13 PM

Senator McCranky will not be hard to beat in a general election -just keep repeating the following statement everywhere:

"John McCain is a decisive man, just like President Bush. If you like the direction the country is going, the Straight Talk Express will go farther and faster down the same path."

That, and make the name Sen. McCranky stick - cartoonish, negative and accurate.

Posted by tommyaquinas | February 7, 2008 9:14 PM

Senator McCranky will not be hard to beat in a general election -just keep repeating the following statement everywhere:

"John McCain is a decisive man, just like President Bush. If you like the direction the country is going, the Straight Talk Express will go farther and faster down the same path."

That, and make the name Sen. McCranky stick - cartoonish, negative and accurate.

Posted by tommyaquinas | February 7, 2008 9:16 PM

Senator McCranky will not be hard to beat in a general election -just keep repeating the following statement everywhere:

"John McCain is a decisive man, just like President Bush. If you like the direction the country is going, the Straight Talk Express will go farther and faster down the same path."

That, and make the name Sen. McCranky stick - cartoonish, negative and accurate.

Posted by tommyaquinas | February 7, 2008 9:17 PM

Stupid iPhone...

No, wait! It's just Rovian repetition at work!

Posted by tommy aquinas | February 7, 2008 9:21 PM

We're being surprised now that a politician lies?

McCain lies as a matter of course. So does Obama and Clinton. With a little work, even Ron Paul could probably easily be caught out, despite his alleged reputation for "integrity" - a word nobody uses with any of the other candidates at all.

So what good does it do to say "Politician X lied when he said..." Everybody knows that he lied. The question is: what did he say that was wrong? Why was it wrong?

Focus on that - not the fact that he lied. They all lie, and everybody knows that. It's discounted.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 7, 2008 10:37 PM

“They all lie, and everybody knows that. It's discounted.”

It's tempting for some of us to agree with this. In fact, I think that the historical average is that both parties lie approximately equally.

But the Bush Era has seen that symmetry break. Bush, far more than any other President in the modern era, has utilized the Big Lie, repeating over and over things that are plainly untruths. Well, to be precise, it's been Cheney who's been the master of this. For example, the supposed Hussein/Al Qaeda connection and WMDs.

And, as has been discussed recently and at length, one of the most egregious and astonishing Big Lies is the near-universal GOP claim that "lowering taxes increases revenues". In the Reagan era, when the Laffer Curve first gained prominence as a GOP talking-point, even then the claim was that federal taxes were so high that the US was on the wrong side of the LC. Now, however, the claim is absolute: reducing taxes leads to increased revenue, full stop.

I'd surely like to see some important media institution take a long, hard look at a list of talking points—on both sides of the aisle—and pick out those that are unambiguously lies, and begin to challenge them. While I think that these days it's the GOP that is by a wide margin most in the wrong, I'm sure there are a few Democrat/Left whoppers here and there. The press needs to stop accepting them.

Wouldn't that be the day?

Posted by Keith M Ellis | February 8, 2008 4:32 AM