A McCain flip-flop in 29 easy seconds= campaign ca$h

This one should surprise no one - it seems that McCain has been the beneficiary of mountains of cash from the oil and gas industry since his high-profile reversal on offshore drilling.

From WaPo:

Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling.

Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.

McCain said the policy reversal came as a response to rising voter anger over soaring energy prices. At the time, about three-quarters of voters responding to a Washington Post-ABC News poll said prices at the pump were causing them financial hardship, the highest in surveys this decade.

[...]

"We have untapped oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production," he said. "It is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions."

McCain delivered the speech before heading to Texas for a series of fundraisers with energy industry executives, and the day after the speech he raised $1.3 million at a private luncheon and reception at the San Antonio Country Club, according to local news accounts.

"The timing was significant," said David Donnelly, the national campaigns director of the Public Campaign Action Fund, a nonpartisan campaign finance reform group that conducted the analysis of McCain's oil industry contributions. "This is a case study of how a candidate can change a policy position in the interest of raising money."

Brian Rogers, a McCain campaign spokesman, said he considers any suggestion that McCain weighed fundraising into his calculation on drilling policy "completely absurd." Rogers noted that oil and gas money in June still accounted for a very small fraction of the $48 million raised by the campaign and by the Republican National Committee through its Victory Fund.

"John McCain takes positions because he thinks it's the right thing to do for America," Rogers said. "He has a long track record of doing that. And he's often made decisions that hurt with his fundraising base."

Well, if McCain comes up short in November, his spokesman, Brian Rogers, certainly has a career ahead of him in stand-up comedy. Does he honestly expect anyone to believe that McCain's modification of his position on drilling (Read: flip-flop) has nothing to do with campaign cash? If you believe that, I've got some Enron stock at rock-bottom prices you might be interested in.

My prediction is that we will see plenty more of these reversals by McCain, especially in light of the fact that he now has such a fundraising disadvantage, at least in his mind. (I don't buy that, either - McCain has been exploiting loopholes in the campaign finance law that bears his name for months and months now, which certainly played no small part in Obama's decision to forego public financing.)

h/t Crooks & Liars