Obama campaign contradicts … Obama – or something like that

Via Jim Geraghty:

Yesterday: The Obama Campaign Claimed That John McCain’s Idea To Pay For Homeowner Mortgages Was Actually Barack Obama. “Seeking to turn around his faltering campaign, John McCain unveiled a dramatic proposal Tuesday to bail out homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages. Ò€¦ Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the idea was not a new one and noted that the Illinois senator had raised it. On Oct. 1, in a news release, Obama said he intended to ‘encourage Treasury to study the option of buying individual mortgages like we did successfully in the 1930s.'” (Bob Drogin And Maura Reynolds, “McCain Mortgage Plan Would Bail Out Homeowners,” Los Angeles Times, 10/8/08)

Today: Obama’s Campaign Calls John McCain’s New Plan To Help Keep Americans In Their Homes “Out-Of-Touch” And Too “Costly.” “Senator McCain’s first response to this economic crisis was to say that the fundamentals of our economy are strong. Since then, he’s acknowledged that there is a crisis and offered multiple plans, sometimes conflicting. Last night, in his latest attempt to get it right, he threw out a proposal that appeared to give the Treasury authority it already has to re-structure troubled mortgages. But now that he’s finally released the details of his plan, it turns out it’s even more costly and out-of-touch than we ever imagined. John McCain wants the government to massively overpay for mortgages in a plan that would guarantee taxpayers lose money, and put them at risk of losing even more if home values don’t recover. The biggest beneficiaries of this plan will be the same financial institutions that got us into this mess, some of whom even committed fraud.” (Ben Smith, “Obama Will Oppose McCain Mortgage Plan,” Politico, 10/8/08)

Ummm … so I guess he was for it before he was “against” it? ;)

McCain needs to use this in the final debate, and say something along the lines of, “On one day, the Obama campaign claimed credit for my homeowner mortgage plan, saying it’s something Barack Obama proposed back on the first of October. The day after his campaign’s statement, Obama criticized my plan as ‘out of touch’. This is the kind of double-speak politics Barack Obama has claimed to be against since he started campaigning for president, but as has been demonstrated routinely throughout the course of this election cycle, again this week he engages in the very same rhetoric he has previously described as ‘typical Washington politics.’ My friends, that’s not change. That’s more of the same.”

Read more via Memeorandum.

Comments are closed.