Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen admits that in the past he - along with other members of the press - sometimes metaphorically experienced goosebumps every time Senator John McCain opened his mouth.
Not any more.
In an op-ed entitled "The Ugly New McCain," Cohen complains that the Republican presidential candidate has now "become the sort of politician he once despised."
"I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain," Cohen writes. "Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician's lap."
According to Cohen, McCain has "soiled" his integrity by capitulating to the right and for standing by his false political advertisements.
"His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for," Cohen writes. "Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not."
Not too long ago, Cohen refused to "plead guilty" for his perceived McCain idolization.
"In some recent magazine articles, I and certain of my colleagues have been accused of being soft on McCain, forgiving him his flips, his flops and his mostly conservative ideology," Cohen wrote in June. "I do not plead guilty to this charge, because, over the years, the man's imperfections have not escaped my keen eye."
Back then, Cohen felt McCain's onetime POW status gave him the edge over the Democratic presidential candidate.
"Nothing so far in his life approaches McCain's decision to refuse repatriation as a POW so as to deny his jailors a propaganda coup," Cohen wrote in June. "In fact, there is scant evidence the Illinois senator takes positions that challenge his base or otherwise threaten him politically. That's why his reversal on campaign financing and his transparently false justification of it matter more than similar acts by McCain."
Cohen was recently taken to task by blogger Matthew Yglesias for dismissing and even red-baiting his critics.
"If you’re a little bit critical of Barack Obama, you get really a pie of vilification right in the face,” Cohen told Politico last month, adding that his liberal critics "were born too late, because they would have been great communists."
The "thin-skinned" Cohen, Yglesias wrote, "sees no need to engage with his critics on the merits — instead, they’re just like Communists!"
However, Cohen concludes in his Wednesday column on McCain, "Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both."
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