From The Guardian UK
By Michael Tomasky

It’s economy week, as both candidates will travel around touting their economic plans. Barack Obama starts in North Carolina, and John McCain in Colorado.

We’ve been talking a lot about flip-flops in the past week, some of them real, most of them imaginary. But I’ve been astonished at how few people have mentioned the obvious mother of all flip-flops in this campaign so far – John McCain’s embrace of the Bush administration tax cuts.

In 2001, McCain was one of just two Republican senators to vote against the tax cuts. “I think it still devotes too much of it to the wealthiest Americans,” he said at the time. And now? Well of course big tax cuts are the anchor of his economic plan. But what tells us more about the man is where and how he indicated the change.

It was last December at a sit-down with the Wall Street Journal editorial board when McCain first made unequivocally clear that as president, he would fight to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent (some are set to expire in 2010). Boy, now that’s courage. Remember the story of the French politician Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, who saw a crowd marching through Paris and reportedly said: “There go my people, I must find out where they are going so I can lead them”? Thus, McCain to Paul Gigot: Tell me where to go, master, and I will lead you there!

This week, McCain will travel the country explaining why these tax cuts – which so disproportionately are doing exactly what the 2001 McCain said they would, benefiting the very wealthiest Americans to the tune of nearly a half-trillion dollars - have to be made permanent. This is not a nip or a tuck or a refinement. This is a blatant and complete reneging on past principle.

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