By Matthew Balan | May 16, 2008 - 16:56 ET Twenty-four hours after CNN started giving covering fire for Barack Obama in response to President Bush’s

The left side of the blogosphere loves the video of John McCain's chat with Jamie Rubin in which he said that "sooner or later we are going to have to deal with" Hamas. The right side of the blogosphere argues that Rubin mischaracterized both McCain's criticism of Obama and his comments about talking to Hamas. NRO's Jim Geraghty found other video of apparently the same time period where McCain says Hamas has to give up on destroying Israel before any talks can take place. RedState's Soren Dayton says that there's a real difference between dealing with Hamas and talking to Iran. Marc Ambinder says that whether to talk to Iran is in fact the salient issue. And Andrew Sullivan

WASHINGTON, May 16 (UPI) - The campaign of Republican presidential contender John McCain said Friday that a 2006 statement McCain made about dialogue with Hamas had been mischaracterized.
Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the presumptive nominee's campaign, said accusations from James Rubin, a former U.S. State Department official under U.S. President Bill Clinton, that McCain, R-Ariz., had supported unconditional dialogue with the Palestinian extremist group in 2006 were misleading, CNN reported Friday.

(CNN) -- John McCain's campaign said Friday that claims by a former State Department official that McCain had advocated unconditional dialogue with the

This hiccup just in from John McCain's attempts to blast Barack Obama over his supposed eagerness to meet with terrorist leaders: McCain wants to meet with them, too.
Well -- sort of, and not quite. Jamie Rubin, whom you may remember as a State Department spokesman during the Clinton administration, uses a Washington Post op-ed today to relate this interview he conducted with McCain two years ago, shortly after Hamas took over the Palestinian government.
in is directly contradicting himself by attacking Senator Obama on his plan to confront Iran at the negotiating table. A pattern is emerging. While McCain claims to be a deep foreign policy thinker with positions carefully

This morning, James P. Rubin, an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of International Affairs who was formerly the State Department's chief spokesman during the Clinton administration, penned an Op-Ed in The Washington Post recalling an interview he did with Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain two years ago, in which McCain took a position with regard to doing business with Hamas that Rubin says makes his present attacks on Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's Middle East policy positions hypocritical. Wrote Rubin:
...given his own position on Hamas, McCain is the last politician who should be attacking Obama. Two years ago, just after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary

By Tobin Harshaw Given his own position on Hamas, McCain is the last politician who should be attacking Obama. Two years ago, just after Hamas won the

By Greg Sargent - May 16, 2008, 12:01PM The McCain campaign is hitting back at a widely-circulated Washington Post Op ed published today by foreign policy

Despite his reputation in the media as a charming maverick, McCain has shown that he is also happy to use Nixon-style dirty campaign tactics. By charging recently that Hamas is rooting for an Obama victory, McCain tried to use guilt by association to suggest that Obama is weak on national security and won't stand up to terrorist organizations, or that, as Richard Nixon might have put it, Obama is soft on Israel.
Attention, Mr. Christine Amanpour: McCain's "dirty campaign tactic" consists of accurately citing the comments of Hamas officials.
upported talking to Hamas. The quote Rubin uses:

• James Rubin in The Washington Post - McCain was in favor of talking to Hamas before he was against it: Writing on the Post's op-ed page today, former Clinton administration State Department spokesman (and current Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter) James Rubin says that when he interviewed Republican presidential contender John McCain two years ago, the Arizona senator was in favor of dealing with Hamas. "They're the (Palestinian) government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them," McCain told Rubin at the time. More recently, Rubin writes, McCain and his aides have been using a comment made by a Hamas spokesman to suggest that the group is "rooting for an

Some of the most interesting things people are saying in the presidential race are coming from the campaign of Sen. John McCain. They seem to indicate that he is going to have his hands full once the Democratic candidate has been nominated. Lets start with the Hamas endorsement issue.
Hamas is the virulently anti-Israeli military and political force that has seized control of Gaza and now is trying to survive the hostility of fellow Palestinians, of Israel, and of the United States. Asked who among the three major candidates he would prefer to see as president, a major Hamas leader said he would prefer Sen. Barack Obama. Since Hamas has been called a terrorist organization