Several recent polls show Americans believe Barack Obama is better prepared to deal with energy prices than John McCain, and given the importance of the issue on the minds of voters, the McCain campaign has decided to rely on a tried-and-true method of campaigning: lie like a rug.

Here’s McCain’s latest television ad:

I occasionally think about something Time’s Joe Klein wrote in April about McCain’s style. Klein predicted that McCain would avoid a cheap and pathetic style of campaigning, because he knows better. McCain, Klein said, “sees the tawdry ceremonies of politics — the spin and hucksterism — as unworthy.” If he doesn’t, “McCain will have to live with the knowledge that in the most important business of his life, he chose expediency over honor.”

For McCain, it appears the equation is simple. If abandoning honor and honesty will give him the presidency, then so be it. The truth, McCain has concluded, is for losers.

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In January, Focus on the Family's James Dobson announced, "Speaking as a private individual, I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances." Dobson issued another statement a month later, insisting he would not vote for McCain in the general election and would stay home if McCain is the GOP nominee.

So much for that commitment.

“I never thought I would hear myself saying this,” Dobson said in a radio broadcast to be broadcast Monday. “… While I am not endorsing Senator John McCain, the possibility is there that I might.”

To continue … “Barack Obama contradicts and threatens everything I believe about the institution of the family and what is best for the nation. His radical positions on life, marriage and national security force me to reevaluate the candidacy of our only other choice, John McCain.”

To be sure, Dobson opposes Obama more than he supports McCain -- a common phenomenon on the right lately -- but this certainly doesn't make Dobson look like Mr. Principled.

Daily Tech had an item that caused a bit of a stir in conservative circles.

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.”

This, coming the same day as Al Gore’s speech, was apparently quite exciting to those on the right who prefer to deny global warming and/or its causes.

One said, “The Association of Physical Scientists has reversed its position on anthropogenic global warming. Where it once considered its position ‘incontrovertable’ [sic] it is now sponsoring open debate on the matter... This is a big deal."

Another argued, “[Physicists] bailing on Gore…. The rats are leaving the ship. Global warming alarmists are frauds.”

Jonah Goldberg initially said, “The same day that Al Gore does his man-to-the-moon spiel on global warming, the American Physical Society — the second largest professional association of physicists — rescinds its total support for the global warming. I await the usual chorus to sing us a tune about how the APS is ‘anti-science.’”

Red State told readers, “The headline at The Drudge Report website, ‘Group Repping 50,000 Physicists Opens Global Warming Debate…’ [linked to dailytech.com] says it all.”

Except, in this case, it didn’t say it all. Climate Progress explains the story very well, including all the reasons the right is wrong about this.

Here’s a video of an informal press conference McCain held in Michigan.

The audio is a little tough to hear, so to clarify, McCain insisted that “we have succeeded” in Iraq. In fact, he said it multiple times: “I am happy to stand in front of you to tell you that this strategy has succeeded. It has succeeded. It has succeeded.”

(It reminds me of the time Marge Simpson told Bart that Springfield is “a part of us all. A part of us all. A part of us all.” She then explained it would help him remember and believe the line if she repeated it this way.)

OK, McCain probably misspoke again. He must have meant that he thinks Bush’s strategy is “succeeding,” not has “succeeded,” right?

Wrong. He's now referring to Bush's Iraq policy in the past tense, as if the war is over.

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The Associated Press hasn't been having a good year. It’s been striking, in part because it’s unexpected — the AP has not exactly earned a reputation of being the Fox News of wire services. For the AP to do so many poor reports in such a short time made it seem as if the outlet had undergone some kind of deliberate shift.

As it happens, it has.

[Ron Fournier, the new head of The Associated Press’s Washington bureau] is a main engine in a high-stakes experiment at the 162-year old wire to move from its signature neutral and detached tone to an aggressive, plain-spoken style of writing that Fournier often describes as “cutting through the clutter.”

Fournier calls the trend “accountability journalism” and “liberating ... the truth.”

In principle, I couldn’t be more pleased. If the AP wants to bring accountability to campaign coverage, I’d be thrilled.

But I’ve seen the results of Fournier’s experiment. The AP is failing badly.

The only thing worse than John McCain’s proposal for a gas-tax holiday is John McCain’s new proposal for a longer gas-tax holiday.

John McCain said Thursday that his proposal to suspend the gas tax for three months this summer may need to be extended longer if high gas prices continue to take a toll on the economy.

“I think we ought to seriously look at whether we need to have it be longer or not depending on what the economy (does),” McCain said, standing beside the Grand River.

“I think we have to consider all options but the fact is we need a gas tax holiday. We need it, we need it, we need it very badly. The Americans that are hurt the most are low income Americans that are driving the oldest automobiles,” he said.

I just find it hard to believe we’re still talking about this obvious nonsense. McCain surely knows that his proposed holiday wouldn’t actually lower the price of gas. Indeed, if he genuinely believed otherwise, McCain would probably go to Capitol Hill — he is still a senator, by the way — introduce legislation, and push lawmakers and the White House to endorse his initiative.

I have to say, McCain is at his least attractive when he takes on the role of con man.

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Two weeks ago, the misguided ideologues at the Wall Street Journal editorial page offered a novel argument: it’s Barack Obama, not John McCain, who’s actually “running for … Bush’s third term.”

It was unusually dumb, even for the WSJ editorial page, and was premised on a series of bizarre lies and distortions. Even unhinged conservatives were reluctant to run with it, and the incoherent talking point quickly faded.

Today, the McCain campaign brought it back.

The McCain campaign is taking their effort to distance their candidate from the unpopular President Bush to a whole new level: McCain’s advisers are now openly attacking Bush on Iraq — and not only that, they’re also saying that Barack Obama is the one who is like Bush on the war!

On a conference call just now with reporters, McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann compared Barack Obama’s insistence on a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq to Bush’s insistence that we were winning even as things went badly for years.

“I think the American people have had enough of inflexibility and stubbornness in national security policy,” Scheunemann said. When asked later by the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein whether the campaign was disparaging President Bush, Scheunemann dug in: “We cannot afford to replace one administration that refused for too long to acknowledge failure in Iraq with a candidate that refuses to acknowledge success in Iraq.”

That’s quite a triangulation strategy, isn’t it? The new line is that McCain sees both Bush and Obama as stubborn.

Let’s take this one step at a time.

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In light of John McCain’s appearance before the NAACP’s national convention, Bruce Bartlett makes the case in a WSJ op-ed that McCain should argue that the Republican Party, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, is the party of civil rights. (If this sounds familiar, Bartlett wrote a book on this subject, called “Wrong on Race.”)

Everyone knows this, but it’s worth repeating: the Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln and was established in 1854 to block the expansion of slavery. The Democratic Party was the party of slavery. […]

After the war, it was the Republican Party that rammed through the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution over Democratic opposition…. Historically speaking, the Republican Party has a far better record on race than the Democrats. Sen. McCain should not be shy about saying so.

This comes less than two weeks after the National Black Republican Association put up billboards in Florida and South Carolina saying the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican (a claim which is demonstrably ridiculous).

Now, we’ve been down this road before, but if the right sincerely intends to push this argument again this election year, we might as well go to the trouble of pointing out how foolish — and frankly, intellectually lazy — this entire tack really is.

The inescapable fact is, the Republican Party of the 19th century bears no resemblance to, and has no bearing on, the modern-day Republican Party. The problem isn’t that Bartlett’s history is wrong; it’s that his history is irrelevant and badly misses the point.

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Over the weekend, John McCain told the New York Times that he opposes gay adoption, even if the alternative is leaving a child in an orphanage. A few days later, McCain’s campaign reversed course and said the senator doesn’t actually believe what he said — “caring parental figures,” even if they’re gay, are “better for the child than the alternative.”

This has been a politically tricky story for McCain. In the wake of his interview comments, published Sunday, McCain drew fairly intense criticism from gay rights groups and adoption advocates, both of which were pleased to see McCain quickly reverse course.

But in making them happy, McCain has once again made the unhinged wing of his party far less happy. Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody wrote:

I’m confused. John McCain gave an interview to The New York Times this week saying he was against gay adoption but then his Communications Director sought to clarify those comments afterwards by saying it was a ’state issue” and that “caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative” of abandoned children.

Huh? That sound you just heard was a can of worms opening up…. I mean if you’re going to say that you’re against gay adoption then why not just stick with that view rather than trying to massage it? The qualifier after the interview does some damage. Why? Because McCain had an opportunity to add the gay adoption issue to his Evangelical checklist and now it’s muddy. […]

Evangelicals are already feeling fidgety about McCain and have concerns about him on a number of issues. Why add to the list?

Brody wrote this on Tuesday, shortly after the McCain campaign “clarified” the position, but the religious right’s discontent has festered.

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While talking about the war in Afghanistan yesterday, John McCain predictably went after Barack Obama, saying Obama “has no strategy.” It was an odd attack, given the fact that McCain had just flip-flopped on his Afghanistan policy, and embraced Obama’s strategy as his own.

Here’s McCain yesterday, talking about his plan to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, in order to bring an Iraq-like strategy to the country.

The key quote, of course, was pretty straightforward: “[O]ur commanders on the ground in Afghanistan say that they need at least three additional brigades. Thanks to the success of the surge, these forces are becoming available, and our commanders in Afghanistan must get them.”

What’s important to realize, though, is that while Obama has been arguing for a year that he wants to send additional troops to Afghanistan, McCain has always held the opposite position, opposing the deployment of more U.S. troops, and arguing that any additional troops come from NATO.

Yesterday, however, McCain reversed course, change his position, and embraced Obama’s policy as his own. As Josh Marshall explained, “So let’s all say it out loud: McCain is now copying Obama’s position on Afghanistan. And with troops that he doesn’t have since he’s against pulling any out of Iraq.”

But it gets worse. McCain has actually held multiple positions on Afghanistan in the last seven days.

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