Spinning It the Best He Can

Pete Yost is doing the best he can in an article on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac regulation:

WASHINGTON – Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse.

Sounds bad for the Republicans, huh? What you have to understand that FanFred targeted Republicans because they already had the Democrats in their pocket. They had to target Republicans because only Republicans pushed for their regulation.

Yost tries to minimize McCain's part in this whole drama by pointing out that Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, or his lobbying firm has taken more than $2 million from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dating to 2000. Unmentioned is the fact that almost every lobbing firm was employed by FanFred up until the collapse. It's a stretch to try to assign retroactive guilt to McCain for hiring Davis now.

Despite the spin, Yost doesn't outright lie though. He concedes that McCain was a cosponsor of the legislation. And he includes the only thing you really need to know about the effort to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

The political backdrop to the debate "was like bizarre-o-world," said the second of three people familiar with the program. "The Republicans were pro-regulation and the Democrats were against it; it was upside down."

Sen. Richard Shelby, the committee chairman at the time, underscored that in a statement Wednesday, saying that with Democrats already on their side, it was not surprising that Freddie Mac and Freddie Mae went after Republicans. "Unfortunately," said Shelby, R-Ala., "efforts then to derail reform were successful."

Yes, sadly they got the few Republicans they needed. John McCain wasn't among them though. He wore the white hat through the whole affair. Why he's not trumpeting the fact is beyond me.