Andrew Sullivan: My questioning of McCain’s cross story has nothing to do with his military service
Seemingly knowing that a few of us on the right have called him out on his hypocrisy regarding the type of below-the-belt questioning he has engaged in regarding the military service of a heroic war veteran, Andrew Sullivan provides us today with this latest gem in order to, ahem, clarify a few things:
It’s worth noting that pursuing the cross-in-the-dirt evangelical parable as it might have happened to McCain is in no way impugning anyone’s war record. No one is disputing in any way what McCain did in Vietnam, his heroism, his sacrifice or any jot and tittle of his combat in arms and time in captivity.
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This incident is not part of McCain’s military service – certainly not one he thought was in any way salient in his first 12,000 word account of his experience.
Yeah. And my writing this post? It’s not part of my blog.  
Byron York tries to sort it all out. In a post titled, “Extra! Extra! Cross-In-The-Dirt Update! It’s Not McCain — It’s The Christianists! And About That Sandal…,” York writes:
Team McCain reshaped and altered the utterly believable story, Sullivan says, to appeal to the evangelical base, beginning in the 2000 campaign. (And we all know how hard John “agents of intolerance” McCain was working to sweet-talk evangelicals back in 2000.) Anyway, Exhibit A in this is a McCain campaign ad telling the cross-in-the-dirt story. In the ad, we see video of someone making a cross in dirt — using a stick. And McCain had said the North Vietnamese guard used his sandal. Aha!
So like, I guess this means that McCain’s changing his story slightly from sandal to stick means he just ‘made up’ the cross-in-the-sand story to please the “Christianists” in the Republican party.  Using that criteria, what does that make Andrew Sullivan’s ‘evolution’ from what he said back in June, which was, “I find both attempts to smear the war records of people who volunteered to fight for their country to be repellent. But the far right is too invested in the politics of Vietnam to take the high road”? Hmm. Perhaps Andrew ‘made up’ that position in the first place in order to please other like-minded far-left Obamaphiles?
Hey – I’m just going by Andrew’s standards for making stuff up and all …