McCain’s Flip Flop

Found a real nice analysis of McCain Flip Flops over the decay all of them intended to gain him the support he needs to go the the White House.

Straight from the anonymous Liberal

John McCain was, for years, a fairly run-of-the-mill Republican, a guy who could be counted on to vote the party line on most issues. Then, as his presidential campaign gained steam in 2000, he pivoted rather wildly to the center in order to appeal to his new found political base, the Beltway press corps. He moderated his positions on abortion, on taxes, on a whole host of issues. He referred to people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance.” And after he lost the nomination, during Bush’s first year in office, he openly flirted with the idea of leaving the Republican party and caucusing with the Democrats. He opposed Bush’s tax cuts on the grounds that they were reckless and unfairly skewed toward the wealthy. And as late as 2004, he is reported to have been genuinely considering an offer to become John Kerry’s running mate.

Then, when he realized that his most likely path to the presidency was winning the Republican nomination in 2008, he began tacking wildly back to the right. He backed President Bush on just about every issue that arose during his second term. He started pulling people into his fledgling campaign that he had previously decried. He spoke at Liberty University. He became an ardent supply-sider and began criticizing those who would allow President Bush’s tax cuts to expire (even in part). He started touting his conservative voting record and backed off any number of previously reasonable positions he’d taken on issues like torture, warrantless surveillance, the estate tax, and now off-shore drilling.

It is not just the Republicans that can play dirty and accuse Obama of flip flops if we check the situation as it is Obama hasn’t changed his mind on any of the important issues, and what has changed is the obvious statement that things will be decided according to the reality that would present itself at the decision making time. This is called rational. We wouldn’t want to have everything predecided, The principles are guiding our goals and the way we look at the data, what are we trying to achieve and why. The tactics might change in response to changing reality.

As long as the same values are guiding the decision making then even when the concrete action changes it is just to better reflect that ideal or value in a changing reality.

Just remember a value like decency, freedom, caring for other people, etc are never linked to a specific activity it is the destination so changing roads may be an indication of loyalty to the idea rather then a betrayal of it. It is the same way when you want to reach someplace but realize that the highway is closed so you turn to other roads. You haven’t changed your destination just the way to get there.