At yet another campaign fundraiser, President Obama told supporters that the Republicans this year offered a stark contrast to himself and were unlike John McCain in 2008:
It will be coming to a head in this election. We’re going to have as stark a contrast as we’ve seen in a very long time between the two candidates. 2008 was a significant election, obviously. But John McCain believed in climate change. John believed in campaign-finance reform. He believed in immigration reform. There were some areas where you saw some overlap.
What? John McCain actually did believe in “campaign-finance reform,” but candidate and President Barack Obama most certainly did not: He was the first presidential candidate in the general election to renounce public campaign financing in the history of the legislation so that he could go on to out-raise McCain three to one. He raised the most money in campaign history, and was the largest recorded recipient of Wall Street cash. In three-and-a-half years, he has held the most fundraisers of any sitting president; he has accepted super PAC money when he said he would not; he has allowed big donors to receive preferential treatment in green-company subsidization. To suggest otherwise is as untrue as it is shameless, and is yet another transparent attempt to post facto praise the losing Republican strategy of 2008.