The one thing I left out of my lengthy diatribe about the GOP debate from January 30th is the timetable debate or name calling.
Again, this was a discussion (again, I hope irony or sarcasm in blog terms comes from italics) between John McCain and Mitt Romney. Who else would it have been between since I think Ron Paul was allowed to speak for approximately five minutes and Mike Huckabee for maybe ten minutes?
McCain asserted that Romney supported a timetable for pullout. Romney asserted that the comment was taken out of context. McCain kept repeating over and over that the buzz word at the time was timetables. This may well be true but unless you can listen to an entire interview and an entire statement, maybe you are not qualified to be president.
Romney says – and when I heard the entire statement, I didn’t think pullout timetables – he was discussing benchmarks and timetables to meet such benchmarks. These timetables did not involve US pullout from Iraq. These timetables involved benchmarks set for Iraq from number of Iraqi military to governing benchmarks. Romney asserts that after this question he was point blank asked if he supported a timetable for pulling out and he answered no. Seems no one from Anderson Cooper to John McCain wanted to listen to that part of the interview.
January 31st, 2008 at 8:27 am
John McCain’s use of the timetable comment is tantamount to what Bill and Hill did to Barak Obama in New Hampshire and what they tried to do in South Carolina. Clinton is quite comfortable taking only half of a quote and putting it out there as if it is the truth. This from the same McCain who gave us McCain-Feingold and is constantly reminding us of President Bush’s dirty campaigning against him in South Carolina in 2000.