Beltway Snark

Now I’ve been watching the Lefty blogosphere go nuts since yesterday over this supposed McCain flip-flop on having talks with Hamas. At the center of the fracas is a Jamie Rubin op-ed that claims that McCain has changed his mind on the topic since 2006, when during an interview with Rubin McCain said that talks with Hamas were going to be a necessary evil:

“They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

Here’s the YouTube video of the comment in question.

Now from that video and comment you can tell that McCain is less than enthused by the prospect of talking to Hamas. Note he also doesn’t say that the talks need to be unconditional as Obama has said.

So a day goes by, and another YouTube video pops up from the same day that McCain spoke to Rubin that clearly defines the terms in which McCain would be willing to talk to Hamas.

That certainly paints a different picture than the one Rubin is trying to portray. McCain puts specific riders on when/if it would be appropriate to speak to Hamas. So the Left tries once again to advance a certain idea based on faulty intel while forgetting that YouTube and the political blogosphere exists. Whoops.

H/T to HotAir