The Arizona senator's new stance comes after voting consistently for years against regulation, just like the vast majority of his Republican colleagues.

"McCain has developed a reputation over the years as someone who was very disinclined to want to regulate, and in that sense he was not a maverick at all but in fact a very mainstream Republican," Paul Beck, political science professor at Ohio State University, said Wednesday.

"And now he's caught in a situation were there was insufficient regulation and the economy is in trouble. It puts him in a very bad position because there's a real credibility problem here."

image