VetVoice: McCain's Double Standard on Campaign Visits to Military Bases

[Coexist]

http://www.vetvoice.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1671

Barack Obama canceled a pre-planned visit to the troops in Germany yesterday after being told by the Pentagon that the trip would violate a Pentagon policy prohibiting campaign stops on military installations. No problem there.
However, the McCain campaign is now blasting Obama:

The McCain camp has nonetheless been using Obama's canceled trip to insinuate that he's anti-troops. "Barack Obama is wrong," McCain spokesperson Brian Rogers said in a statement yesterday. "It is never 'inappropriate' to visit our men and women in the military."

The problem here is that the McCain campaign was denied a visit to a military base under the same policy back in April. Of course, there was no outcry or false outrage from Brian Rogers at that time.

From CNN:

With Department of Defense rules prohibiting political campaigning on military bases, it was determined that in some cases McCain could visit the installations as a senator but could not engage in any political activity or have news media present.

McCain campaign officials said Thursday they intentionally did not campaign on military property.

"We follow the rules," said senior McCain adviser Steve Schmidt.

I understand that the McCain campaign is disorganized and pathologically clueless when it comes to utilizing the media, but they're clearly being dishonest in this case. McCain is demonstrably criticizing Obama for following a Pentagon rule to which the McCain campaign itself has been subjected recently. That's a fact. So this seems to be a simple cheap shot at Obama, in the hopes that the media won't be internet savvy enough (i.e., able to use Google) to figure out the whole story.

"We follow the rules," Steve Schmidt from the McCain campaign said.

Exactly. And they have no problem attacking Obama for doing the same. That's the very definition of "double standard."

Exactly.