Hypocrisy Then, Hypocrisy Now, Hypocrisy Forever.

By Michael Flannigan

"John McCain doesn't run with the Washington crowd." - Alaskan Governor and McCain running mate Sarah Palin, on a man who indeed hasn't bothered to vote on a single bill since April.

St. Paul, MN --- John McCain's acceptance speech at the GOP convention last night was not just an exercise in hypocrisy but a full cardio workout replete with weight training, ab crunches and pilates.

As usual, one hardly knows where to begin. Luckily, Jim Kuhnhenn at the AP did begin with a fact check. It was a good start, something we've seen all too infrequently in the MSM regarding the McCain campaign and its rampant hypocrisy on steroids. But I say we can hit back even harder. A lot harder.

Let's revisit McCain's breathtaking charges of "corporate welfare" for the petroleum cartels. Kuhnhenn correctly says:

Yes, Obama voted for a 2005 energy bill backed by Bush that included billions in subsidies for oil and natural gas production. McCain opposed the bill on grounds it included unnecessary tax breaks for the oil industry. But Obama has said he supported the legislation because it provided money for renewable energy. Obama did vote for an effort to strip the legislation of the oil and gas industry tax breaks. When that failed, he voted for the overall measure.

In fact, this is what McCain said:

"We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties and Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust, when we valued our power over our principles."

Now, the very word "welfare", when distorted in a sneer, is sure to delight fulltime Republicans who are erstwhile conservatives that are all too eager to forget that McCain has been proposing a massive tax cut (.pdf file) for corporations like the kind he's pretending to have opposed three years ago (from 35% to 25%). They're also all too eager to forget that McCain's campaign got a fresh infusion of over $1,000,000 in cash from the same the same oil industry from the nanosecond he flipflopped on offshore drilling.

Just sneering the word "welfare" in itself was Republican dog whistling that's just as unmistakable as Ronald Reagan's in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1980, all wrapped up in a faux populist message eaten up by a sea of semi-autonomous, carbon-based sock puppets.

In fact, the entire Republican party in its old home week that resurrected the political cadavers of Mitt Romney, Rudy Guiliani and Fred Thompson, distanced themselves from the Bush/Cheney criminal enterprise just far enough to try to achieve a Democratic-style populist appeal.

"No welfare for the oil industry!"

"Energy conservation!"

"Holding the oil companies accountable in (snort) Alaska."

Sales of Depends in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area must've skyrocketed during the past week.

"I've fought corruption..."

Does fighting it from the inside count?

"I've fought to get million-dollar checks out of our elections."

However, McCain isn't as combative against slightly smaller checks that total more than a million dollars.

"I've fought lobbyists who stole from Indian tribes."

Obviously, McCain was pulling his punches when accepting 6 figure campaign donations from an Abramoff-run lobbying firm.

McCain is also a kinder, more forgiving kind of Republican, a guy who personally sent Ralph Reed to political Purgatory during his alleged investigation into Jack Abramoff only to appear just weeks ago at a fundraiser with none other than... Ralph Reed!

Equally false was the conciliatory facade of abandoning the tough guy language used throughout this bile fest toward Obama, as McCain wasted no time in underscoring with supreme chutzpah the Illinois senator's lack of experience in international matters.

It seems to me that Obama had met with more heads of state during his whirlwind trip to central Asia, the Middle East and Europe than McCain's Wasilla mayor and former sportscaster with the Viagra-teased hair has in her entire 44 years.

I'm sure you get the gist by now. McCain and Palin are setting themselves up as reformers, the ultimate outsiders who are bound and determined to restore honor and integrity to the White House.

Mmmm, mmm! I can't wait. I love the smell of reform in the morning!