{"id":13641,"date":"2007-11-18T18:00:38","date_gmt":"2007-11-18T23:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13641.html"},"modified":"2007-11-18T18:00:38","modified_gmt":"2007-11-18T23:00:38","slug":"john-mccain-revisionist-historian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/john-mccain-revisionist-historian\/","title":{"rendered":"John McCain, revisionist historian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Campaigning in New Hampshire today, John McCain, well aware of the Iraq war’s unpopularity, insisted<\/a> that he’s been a critic of the administration’s approach for years.<\/p>\n

McCain also notes, especially for anti-war voters, that he was an early critic of the war strategy waged by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.<\/p>\n

“The strategy was going to fail with Rumsfeld. I fought against. I spoke against,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He’s been repeating this line quite a bit lately, holding himself out as one of the leading critics of the Bush war policy before Rumsfeld’s ouster a year ago. Indeed, two weeks ago, McCain told a GOP audience that it was he, and no one else<\/a>, who was willing to step up and make the Republican case that the White House policy was failing.<\/p>\n

Most political reporters are noting McCain’s talking points, but few are explaining how wrong they are.<\/p>\n

In his stump speech, McCain argues that he “clearly pointed out [what] was a failed strategy.” This just isn’t true. In December 2003<\/a>, McCain praised Bush’s strategy as “a mission accomplished.” In March 2004<\/a>, he said, “I’m confident we’re on the right course.” In December 2005<\/a>, he said, “Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.”<\/p>\n

And now he wants to position himself as a critic of Bush’s pre-2007 policy? For anyone who’s been paying attention, it’s a little late for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Campaigning in New Hampshire today, John McCain, well aware of the Iraq war’s unpopularity, insisted that he’s been a critic of the administration’s approach for years. McCain also notes, especially for anti-war voters, that he was an early critic of the war strategy waged by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. “The strategy was going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}