The GOP's Flip-Flopping Four

National Review Online: Top Republican Candidates Have Switched Stances On Key Issues

(National Review Online)  This column was written by Ramesh Ponnuru.

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The four leading Republican candidates for president have demonstrated that they have four distinct styles of flip-flopping.

Mitt Romney is the most notorious flip-flopper in the field, and his most notorious flip-flop concerned abortion. He claims that a conversation with scientists about human cloning made him see how abortion had devalued human life. Nobody can prove that Romney isn’t telling the truth, but nobody quites believe him, either. Romney has also changed positions on guns, immigration, and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. But it is not the number of his flip-flops that has impressed people so much as how they have altered his political character. He was a moderate technocrat a few years ago, but has become a culture warrior.

Rudy Giuliani presents himself as a man who respects conservatives too much to pander to them. Social conservatives, he argues, should trust him more since he doesn’t alter his positions to suck up to them. But Giuliani has switched his positions on guns, partial-birth abortion, immigration, and civil unions, in each case moving rightward. He has been pretty consistent in his flip-flop methodology: He finds some detail that justifies the switch. The detail is usually bogus. He said, for example, he was able to support a ban on partial-birth abortion because it included a life-of-the-mother exception - but the one he had opposed had included that exception, too. He said that he would no longer support the lawsuit he initiated against gunmakers, primarily because the case had “taken several turns and several twists that I don’t agree with.” (He then qualified that with a “probably.”) But the principal turn is that the plaintiffs have scaled back their demands. He came out against “comprehensive” immigration reform not because it included amnesty, but because it didn’t create adequate databases.

When Al Gore flipped from pro-life to pro-choice during his first run for president, one of his aides told a reporter that his strategy for dealing with his past was to “deny, deny, deny.” Fred Thompson seems to have copied his abortion strategy from the man whose Senate seat he took. The difference is that it’s a pro-choice past that he denies having. He distinguishes himself from Romney on abortion by saying that he, Thompson, was with pro-lifers yesterday and will be with them tomorrow. What Thompson can’t admit is that he wasn’t with pro-lifers the day before yesterday.

John McCain’s main flip-flop has been on taxes. He voted against Bush’s tax cuts, but now he wants to keep them. He justifies the switch by saying that circumstances have changed. He hasn’t apologized for his earlier vote. But to allow the tax cuts to expire now would be to raise taxes. As David Brooks noted the other day, McCain is never terribly convincing when he does something he doesn’t believe in. Earlier this year he said that tax cuts always raise revenue. It’s a nonsensical claim, but it also makes his overall argument impossible to sustain. One of his principal objections to the Bush tax cuts was that they would increase the deficit. If he now thinks that tax cuts increase revenue, he was wrong and should say so.

If I had to judge the matter, I’d say that Thompson and Giuliani go about their flip-flopping with a bit more dishonesty than Romney and McCain. But if you want edification, look away from the whole field.

[quatrops]

As long as NRO is attempting to look "fair and balanced", I''d like them to take a look at the progenitor of the Bush dynasty, PRESCOTT BUSH who, interestingly, has been given little attention in the media''s right.

Prescott, who in the ''30s could have been described as a "never met a fascist German businessman I didn''t like" type of guy, had a long record of promoting business deals favorable to the Nazi regime.

It wasn''t until late December ''41 that FDR made trading with the enemy illegal. Until then Prescott, with only his own moral principles to guide him, had no difficulty enriching the family treasury by promoting commercial deals favorable to Nazi Germany.

One only has to look at the more current history of the moral mindset of his heirs to be reminded of the adage " . . the sins of the father . . ".

[dfcstech]

Huckabee! Huckabee! I LOVE HUCKABEE!

http://www.hucksarmy.com/video.php

[realpatriot1]

hillaryin08,

We don''t have enough Democrats to deliver. That will change next year when we kick some more weasel repubs to the curb.

[stevejk4]

Ron Paul would end the war, he can''t do it as a congressman but he could do it as president. along with backing money with metals so the dollar is not just a piece of paper. think of the money we would save if we weren''t paying for a war and playing the game of world police. we could cut taxes and pay down the national debt

[random_radar]

Congress can end the Iraq war anytime they want to. Get a clue--they don''t want to. All you have to do now is figure out why...

[hillaryin08]

Dont you just love how the Democrats keep promising the end to Bush''s war and cant deliver the goods? How long will the liberals keep giving their votes away for nothing?

[hillaryin08]

WASHINGTON %u2014 A Democrat-led plan to bring combat troops home from Iraq by December 2008 and place more restrictions on the administration''s interrogation program through a $50 billion war-funding measure has failed.

[Razzl]

It''s delicious to see the havoc that Karl Rove''s strategy has wreacked among the next generation of GOP presidential hopefuls. Religious extremism is an impossible basis for an American political party; like Al-quaeda''s attack on the World Trade Center, Rove''s mobilization of religious voters is a fluke that worked once because the society was sleeping and will fail in the future because we''ve all caught on to the trick. It''s time to stop pandering to the Godspell audience and start addressing what the real-world voters want to hear...

[jack3213]

B48151: I agreee. CBS is so biased it is pathetic. Taken the heat off a women who can''t even keep her own house in order and can''t even tell us HOW she will make the changes she promises and then not accuse her of not ansering questions and keeping secrets. She even admited she likes secrecy. FLIP FLOPPING is not the foucs on Republicans as much as it is on Clinton. Give me a break already with this propaganda s---!!

[williaml8]

Voters are undecided about these flip-flopping politicians, because no one knows what they will do after elected. Mike Huckabee, by contrast, is plain-spoken, reasonable, and consistent, one we can trust.