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Thursday, September 23, 2004

Who's the bigger flip-flopper?

John F. Harris gets space on the front page of tomorrow mornings issue of the Washington Post for this piece:

Despite Bush Flip-Flops, Kerry Gets Label

One of this year's candidates for president, to hear his opposition tell it, has a long history of policy reversals and rhetorical about-faces -- a zigzag trail that proves his willingness to massage positions and even switch sides when politically convenient.

The flip-flopper, Democrats say, is President Bush. Over the past four years, he abandoned positions on issues such as how to regulate air pollution or whether states should be allowed to sanction same-sex marriage. He changed his mind about the merits of creating the Homeland Security Department, and made a major exception to his stance on free trade by agreeing to tariffs on steel. After resisting, the president yielded to pressure in supporting an independent commission to study policy failures preceding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Bush did the same with questions about whether he would allow his national security adviser to testify, or whether he would answer commissioners' questions for only an hour, or for as long they needed.
Harris continues by showing that the Democrats have lost their media battle to paint the President as a flip-flopper, though they have not yet given up.

For a while this summer, Kerry's team tried to answer Bush's charge that Kerry is equivocating and inconstant by alleging that Bush is just as much or more so. But lately the campaign has laid off this line of argument after concluding it was ineffective against an opponent who surveys show is seen by a majority of voters as decisive, even to the point of stubbornness.

"When it comes to shifting positions, he can shift with the best," Kerry spokesman Joe Lockhart said of Bush. "We are prosecuting a different case. We are not arguing that he's a flip-flopper -- he is -- but that the policy choices he has taken have failed miserably."
There's a lot more in the article, so I definitely suggest you read it (because this cursory introduction does not give it due justice).
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