Should We Be Surprised McCain is Lying?

I'm really not sure what scares me more, the fact that John McCain is lying and distorting truth so much it is tough to keep count, or that I accept it as something Republicans do? After almost eight years of the Bush Administration's lies, I am used to being misled. It is what the US government does. When I hear the Department of Defense claim that they killed thirty suspected Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, I instinctively translate that to mean something more like ninety Afghan civilians, including over fifty children (which was what Afghan officials are claiming happened in a US led air strike in the village of Azizabad last week). Ironically it seems a man named Oliver North is the one in the center of the lies this time. This now Fox News correspondent was indicted and then later pardoned in the 1980s for lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra scandal during on of our past Republican administration under Ronald Reagan.

Why are the left so surprised that McCain is lying? Shouldn't we expect this from these Rove Republicans?