Ed Morrissey seems even more perturbed at Senator McCain than I. He provides an excellent retrospective of the Keating 5’s Greatest Hits, Volume I, McCain’s Screaming Hypocrisy, and the aforelined Mr. Clean (with a bid, old, honkin' question mark.)
Captain Ed sums up McCain’s chicanery quite well:
Here we have a man who has done more harm to the First Amendment as anyone in the past generation, all the while scolding us on coordination of electoral efforts, and he’s playing a shell game with Cablevision in order to gin up indirect payments to his staff. Davis claims that McCain didn’t solicit the donations, but Davis did; according to his own account, he sought out the donation from Cablevision after hearing that they might be interested in funding The Reform Institute. Coincidentally, McCain starts writing letters and making phone calls on behalf of Cablevision shortly after the first installment gets cashed by Davis and the Reform Institute. Under the BCRA, this kind of activity would easily qualify as coordination if they had pulled off this stunt during an election. It may still qualify as a conflict of interest under federal law, and possibly an illegal campaign contribution.
In my letter to McCain of March 3, 2005, I asked him to resign from the Senate. That was before we learned of his conveniently timed support for Cablevision. Perhaps we can drive him out of the Senate on the strength of this news.
Related:
Another Senate Hypocrite in Trouble