Never one to miss an opportunity for a lunge to the jugular, the McCain campaign's rapid response man is going after Barack Obama's failure to support a filibuster on the FISA compromise bill in the Senate.
Quoth Tucker Bounds:
"A few short months ago, Barack Obama outwardly opposed terrorist surveillance legislation, saying that he would filibuster any bill that includes immunity for American telecommunications companies that had been asked by the government to participate in the program. Today, the U.S. Senate will approve legislation providing the immunity Barack Obama supposedly opposed, and despite his promise, he will not support a filibuster. What Barack Obama will do is show that he's willing to change positions, break campaign commitments and undermine his own words in his quest for higher office.
But of course if Obama were supporting a filibuster today, Bounds would likely be at the Illinois Democrat's throat for blindly putting the liberal "party line" ahead of the national security risks purportedly addressed by the FISA legislation, which McCain also supports. The reason we can say this with confidence is because that's precisely the line Bounds used against Obama two weeks ago to attack him, at that particular second, for inflexibility on the matter of national security when it comes to Iraq:
"The Obama campaign's ideological determination for withdrawal at any cost has blinded them to the facts on the ground even as they avoid the advice of our commanders. America is looking for a leader who will put country before the party line, and on issues from Iraq to energy, Barack Obama has offered nothing but the same old partisan positions." (Emphasis mine)
So if Obama shows flexibility on a national security matter, he's an untrustworthy hack -- and if he stands his ground, he's a rigid partisan. That's a neat game of three card monte, as far as it goes, but as TIME's Michael Scherer has noted, this kind of rapid response inanity hastens along the already precipitous pace of the dumbing-down of American politics. Especially since the McCain campaign would like to have flexibility be the province of noble statesmen when it comes to the issue of, say, offshore drilling.