Aravosis listens to tedious McCain conference calls so you don’t have to.
Then McCain’s lawyer dropped the real bomb.
The Keating Five Investigation was "a political smear job on John [McCain]." WTF? He called Howell Heflin, who led the hearings, a "stooge" of the Democratic machine out to get poor, innocent John McCain.
This opens up the entire question of McCain’s supposed contrition. If McCain thinks he did nothing wrong, and that it was wrong for the Senate to scold him for his actions during the Keating Five Scandal, then he isn’t contrite at all, he isn’t sorry at all. He’s learned nothing. You can’t turn a new leaf when you don’t think you did anything wrong. [my emphasis]
I’d go further. As the NRO helpfully reminds us this morning (inconveniently for them, they didn’t get the memo about this latest McCain flip-flop until it was too late), McCain’s entire claim to be since about his mavericky reformer personality stems from his contrition about his mistakes with Keating.
…his involvement in the scandal is what drove McCain to become such a relentless pain-in-the-tuchus about campaign finance reform, and arguably blind to First Amendment objections. Put aside the fact that McCain sees that his association with Keating was a mistake,…
I guess that whole maverick reform business was just a temporary, politically convenient stunt, then, if the underlying contrition was just an act.