First, he backpedaled on earmarks, saying that earmarks were necessary to keep the President from just doing whatever he wanted. Fair enough, but pretty different from what the R's were saying the last couple of months.
Then he said about the health care reform repeal, and I'm trying to not paraphrase too much: A) I'm going to vote for it, B) it's not going to pass (presumably he meant it would fail in the Senate,) and C) I don't really want to repeal health care reform anyhow.
He then went on to throw up a smokescreen of false and misleading points about the new health care law, for instance saying that it's wrong to mandate health insurance coverage when people can't afford it (the reform law specifically addresses that issue to make it affordable through subsidies), and saying it's too expensive (when in fact repealing the health care reform law will add $100 billion to the deficit).
By this point, I've come to expect R's to peddle in misinformation, tho it was disappointing to hear it from a guy who seemed reasonable otherwise. But it was really incredible to hear the mental gymnastics required to say, "I'm going to vote for something I don't agree with because I know it will eventually fail."
I may disagree with him on the larger points, but on this, I hope he's not wrong.
