McCain's Mutually Exclusive '06 Analyses

Senator McCain of Arizona is offering two mutually exclusive analyses of why the Republican Party lost control of Congress in 2006. Now, of course, he can't offer the first important reason the Republicans lost: Iraq. He and his candidacy are too tightly tied to the president's policies in the region.

But, a week ago, Mr. McCain said that the Republican Congress's profligate spending was to blame for the party's losses in November. "I don't think that the Republican Party lost the election because of the war in Iraq," Mr. McCain said, as Citizens Against Government Waste unveiled its latest "Pig Book," which catalogues the worst pork-barrel-spending abuses in the current year's budget. "I think the Republican Party lost because of our failure to control spending and earmarking, which then led to corruption, which then led to members of Congress going to jail."

Now, he's fingering a quite different culprit: fiscal conservatives. (You know, the people who stand up to the profligate spenders.)

Read the whole story at NYSunPolitics.com.