Saturday, June 28, 2008

What does McCain mean by ‘we’?

Steve Benen, Crooks and Liars: There was a vote last night in the Senate on the war supplemental, which included the Webb/Hagel GI Bill. The spending bill, including the expanded education benefits for veterans, passed overwhelmingly (92 to 6), and will be added to the $165 billion that the House and Senate have already approved for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The roll-call is online; every Democrat, and most Republicans, voted for the bill. John McCain, as is now common, didn’t show up for work. Barack Obama was there, and he voted for the funding.
What’s especially interesting, though, is McCain’s response to last night’s vote.
Is that so. How can McCain be “happy” to promote a bill that “we” passed to help veterans with their education benefits, when McCain opposed the Webb/Hagel GI Bill from the beginning? He actively fought against it. Indeed, McCain’s opposition nearly scuttled the bill.
What’s more, when the Obama campaign began hitting McCain over this, he got pretty touchy about it.
And now he wants voters to think he supported the bill all along? That “we” — by implication, including himself — increased “educational benefits for our veterans”?
Even by McCain standards, this is pretty outrageous.

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