McCain hints at supporting timetable

[struggle4progress]

Michael Cooper, The New York Times

First the Iraqi government gave Sen. Barack Obama a boost by seeming to embrace his proposal for a 16-month plan for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. Now could Sen. John McCain, who built his candidacy in large part on his opposition to such a schedule, possibly be following suit?

"I think it's a pretty good timetable," McCain said Friday in an interview on CNN, before adding that it should be based "on the conditions on the ground."

For months, McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has strongly opposed setting a timetable for withdrawal and has criticized Obama, his Democratic rival, for suggesting one. But the debate has shifted in recent days as Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki, moved closer to Obama's position.

In the CNN interview, McCain first seemed to play down any possibility that al-Maliki would actually ask the United States to withdraw in the next 16 months to two years. "He won't," McCain said ...

http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1154562.html

[Kdillard]

1. flip flop

[TwilightGardener]

2. Flippity, floppity, flappity-floo.

[jcla]

3. A withdrawel timetable... a winner from OBAMA!

Seems like McShame still can't get it correct and has to get any good ideas from BHO's platform....
We saw Obama in France talking and taking pics and McShame talking and taking pics in the Dairy aisle....
McShame critized Obama for not going to Iraq and Afghanistan and now critizes him for going there...
Flipity flop..plop..plop.

[monmouth]

4. In a way this is good, the press has to acknowledge this flip-flop

don't they? I mean how transparent and desperate does one have to become before it is acknowledged. Sunday morning should tell. Probably not.

[Inuca]

5. I saw the interview and

mt feeling is that he said it conversationally, in the sense that it is not a change of position or anything significant, just that he was careless about the words that came out of his mouth. I may be of course completely wrong, but that's the distinct feeling I had. Also because it seemed inconsistent with his insistence that Maliki (that he "knows very well") will not ask for a timetable.

[Maria Wr]

6. good catch. this should be rec'd up

just so all can see the latest flip flop from mcsame...

[niceypoo]

7. John McBama

Slow metamorphosis into Obama's positions...

[PatSeg]

10. While portraying Obama

as Bush-like! Are there any sane, rational republicans left? The McCain campaign is totally losing it.

[saltpoint]

8. McCain is in a bit of a muddle. He doesn't seem to know economics.

He doesn't seem to know the Middle East very well. He doesn't seem to understand what's taking place right in front of him.

If you're going to pander, you have to be good at it. Reagan was good at it. Eithers he was really good at it or he was already so brain-gnawed that it came off as his being good at it, but in any case he could stand in front of a microphone and an audience and twist them around his little finger.

McCain has no knack for it at all. He isn't very good on his feet. He's not even as good as the average Republican office-holder, and that means he's pretty bad indeed.

McCain knows he has to oppose the timetable because for so long Dubya opposed it, but now al-Maliki has endorsed Obama's position and that leaves McCain high and dry.

So we get this blurred nonsense in his public comments on Iraq in a week when Barack Obama is the toast of the world.

[speedoo]

9. yup.

I see it that way as well.

[PatSeg]

11. And he has the personality of a damp dish rag

The only thing going for McCain is that he is a familiar face to those who are afraid of change. The poor republican party is waiting for the second coming of Reagan. Finding a republican politician with charisma is evidently a nearly impossible task.

[saltpoint]

12. Agree. That's why McCain should choose Franklin Graham as his

running mate.

I'm sending Franklin Graham's name up as a trial buffoon, I mean balloon, just to see how it fits. McCain has to try the glass slipper on the feet of all the ladies in the kingdom before he knows for sure which one it truly fits.