John McCain was against regulation before he was for it

Hey, I didn't make the rules that changing your mind based on changing information was "weak" and made you a "flip-flopper", Republicans did. So...sauce for the goose, baby.

John McCain, then:

In 2002, McCain introduced a bill to deregulate the broadband Internet market, warning that "the potential for government interference with market forces is not limited to federal regulation." Three years earlier, McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country's financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.

That bill allowed AIG to participate in the gold rush of a rapidly expanding global banking and investment market. But the legislation also helped pave the way for companies such as AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments.

John McCain, now:

McCain now condemns the executives at those companies for pursuing the ambitions that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act made possible, saying that "in an endless quest for easy money, they dreamed up investment schemes that they themselves don't even understand."

He said the misconduct was aided by "casual oversight by regulatory agencies in Washington," where he said oversight is "scattered, unfocused and ineffective."

"They haven't been doing their job right," McCain said yesterday, "or else we wouldn't have these massive problems on Wall Street, and that's a fact. At their worst, they've been caught up in Washington turf wars instead of working together to protect investors and the public interest."

Flip-flop! Flip-flop!

Now, I could be convinced to give McCain credit for adjusting to new information -- if he admitted that he had been wrong. But he hasn't. He's just hoping no one was paying attention, and that the Intart00bz don't exist, and that there isn't a record of his earlier support for regulation:

In 1995, he said that regulation was "destroying the American family, the American dream" and voters "want these regulations stopped."

In March of this year, he said "I'm always for less regulation," and that he's "fundamentally a deregulator. ..."

...unless deregulation stands in the way of him being president, in which case he sings a different tune.

So I wonder what the economic conservatives think of the new, regulation-friendly John McCain?

And I wonder when the media are going to pick up the "flip-flop" meme that they were so willing to use against John Kerry and turn it back on McCain?

I'm not holding my breath.