Today, Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell (KY), John McCain (R-AZ), and Kit Bond (MO) held a “Health Care Reform Forum” at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO. However, the event was closed to the public. ThinkProgress spoke with Barbara Mueth, vice president of community relations at Children’s Mercy, who confirmed that the attendees had all been invited by either the hospital or the senators. At the event, McConnell said that it was time to “step back and start over” on health care.

McConnell and McCain will be continuing their health care road show this week. Both events will also be closed to the public:

– Charlotte, NC: McCain and McConnell will “join Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., in Charlotte on Tuesday for a ‘hospital forum’ at Carolinas Medical Center. With hospital employees and Burr’s invited guests attending, there will likely be little room for the public in an auditorium that holds fewer than 300 people, said Gail Rosenberg, spokeswoman for Carolinas HealthCare System.”

– Hialeah, FL: The event at Palmetto General will feature McCain, McConnell, and Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL). “It will be open to the press, but closed to the public.”

Although McCain has held town hall meetings, McConnell has largely avoided them. His spokesman Robert Steurer said that he is instead “speaking to Rotary clubs, chambers of commerce and hospital groups.”

On Thursday on Kansas City radio station 980 KMBZ, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) — who has faced several contentious town hall audiences — criticized the GOP senators for not opening up their events:

McCASKILL: I’m disappointed that the Republican leader of the Senate is coming to Kansas City on Monday and participating in a forum, but they’re not opening it up to the public. It’s invitation-only. I think it might be helpful for the leadership in the Republican Party to have some of the experiences I’ve had over the last week, where some of the meetings are wildly in favor of reform, and other meetings are wildly against it. I think having that pulse is important, and I think the Republican leader would benefit from that.

Elsewhere in Missouri today, McCaskill is holding a health care town hall meeting where organizers expected 1,100 people to show up. Listen to the interview here:

Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) just announced that he will support Judge Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, explaining that “my choice for President did not win the last election, and…our people’s democracy has spoken for the change and they are getting it.” ”Elections,” says Bond, “do have consequences.” Bond joins six other Republicans in defying his party’s base to support President Obama’s nominee. Watch it:

Bond’s willingness to break from his fellow conservatives may flow from his plans to retire from the Senate at the end of his current term. A coalition of prominent right-wing activists, led by disgraced computer hacker Manuel Miranda, delivered a letter to minority senators demanding that they filibuster Judge Sotomayor just one week after her nomination was announced. 

Right-wing attack dog Ed Whelan recently warned that conservative senators who do not share his views on judges “may discover that the next elections they face have unwelcome consequences for their political careers.” With no risk of a primary challenge in his future, however, Bond apparently feels comfortable voting his conscience, instead of the right wing’s “white voter strategy.”

As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, Republicans who opposed Wall Street salary caps, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Banking Commitee ranking member Richard Shelby (R-AL), are now flipping their positions to condemn the bonuses paid by AIG. Last night, McConnell made the rounds on cable television to misleadingly suggest that he has always favored salary caps.

But McConnell and Shelby are not the only Republican lawmakers pushing this deception. Rep. Peter King (R-NY), Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO), and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) also are hypocritically altering their views:

Q: “Should Congress, should the White House be getting a way for these contracts to be broken?”
KING: “Congress should find a way to do it or the administration should lean on them in a way to get – to have it done.” [MSNBC, 3/17/09]

BOND: “It’s unacceptable to pay bonuses after the American taxpayer was forced to bail out an institution without reforming it.” [KRCG, 3/18/09]

INHOFE: “The AIG situation is clear evidence of what happens when you shovel money out the door with no strings attached and no transparency.” [KTUL, 3/17/09]

Only a month ago, King argued against strong provisions to ensure executive salaries were capped:

KING: “No, I will say, I agree there should have been some caps. I think this went too far, and I think it can be counterproductive.” [ABC News, 2/15/09]

Last month, Bond sharply criticized a bill offered by Sen. Claire McCaskill to limit the salary of executives at companies receiving federal bailout money to no more than what the president of the United States makes — $400,000 a-year:

BOND: “The worst thing we can do is tell businesses how to run themselves. Congress has a pretty bad track record. If you you look at our collective judgment, all 535 of us in our wisdom can’t run government very well. (We) sure can’t run business.” [STL Today, 2/2/09]

While Inhofe today demands “strings attached” to federal bailout money, he expressed the opposite in February:

INHOFE: “I thought, is this still America? Do we really tell people how to run [a business], and who to pay and how much to pay?” [Huffington Post, 2/6/09]

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich today penned an op-ed venting his “outrage” at the “fat bonuses” paid to staffers at AIG. However in November, while speaking with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, he attacked Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) for having the audacity to send “off letters to every bank demanding to know all of their executive compensation policy.” Gingrich then scoffed at the idea of capping salaries specifically at AIG:

GINGRICH: “You have a level of micromanagement of AIG and others. You can’t apply Washington bureaucratic rules to a free market company without ultimately destroying the company.” [Fox News, 11/12/08]

Hypocrisy abounds.