More Political Tit-for-Tat
(Sorry.)
By Brad Friedman on 7/16/2004, 1:34pm PT  

Kurt Kurowski at Democratic Underground outlines just a few of Dubya's many Flip-Flops.

As Kurowski points out, however, it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who sagely called consistency "the hob-goblin of little minds."

None the less, in the interest of "a silly little round of political pat-a-cake", since the bulk of his piece outlines indeed how the "flip-flopping" charge, as the GOP Talking Points put it, is little more than rhetorical sleight-of-hand, political expediency and shamless opportunism.

But in this season, I suppose, the unanswered shot can be the fatal one. Yes, we've covered some of the many George W. Bush "Flip-Flops" before, but it's always nice to have a well-bulleted list as a refreshing reminder/reference tool when met with the robotic-like parrotted Rush-rhetoric of your Fake-Conservative-Beyond-Any-Reason Brother-in-Law at this year's Labor Day BBQ.

I present to you George W. Bush, running for his first term as president and second term as White House flip-flopper:

• Bush is against a Homeland Security Department; then he's for it.
• Bush is against a 9/11 commission; then he's for it.
• Bush is against a WMD investigation; then he's for it.
• Bush is against nation building; then he's for it. (Even before 9/11 it was part of his foreign policy, PNAC. So drop the "everything changed after 9/11" malarky.)
• Bush said he'll provide money for first responders (emergency services); then he doesn't.
• Bush is against deficits; then he's for them.
• Bush is for free trade; then he's for tariffs on steel; then he's against them again.
• Bush said he'll reduce Greenhouse gases; then doesn't do it.
• Bush is for a patient's bill of rights then; then he fights against it.
• Bush say that "help is on the way" to the military; then he cuts benefits.
• Bush talks about helping education; then he cuts funding.
• Bush says the U.S. won't negotiate with North Korea; then he says we will.
• Bush campaigns at racist Bob Jones University; then says he shouldn't have.
• Bush says he will demand a U.N. Security Council vote on whether to sanction military action against Iraq; then he announces he won't call for a vote.
• Bush says the "mission accomplished" banner was put up by the Navy; then he admits it was his advance team.
• Bush is for fingerprinting and photographing Mexicans who enter the US; then he's against it.
• Bush is for a state's right to decide on gay marriage; then he's for amending the constitution to prevent it. (Cheney, whose daughter is a lesbian, shared this flippety-flop big time. "Gee thanks, dad." "Don't fret, hon, daddy's only playing up to the rubes!")

And there are almost one hundred more examples, all accomplished in only three and a half years. Just imagine how proud his mother must be.

From what I understand of the Republican horror of flip-flopping and the integrity deficit it indicates, and given Mr. Bush's record as a flip-flopper, many Republicans will now be forced by conscience into a third party vote, or into not voting at all. But maybe Rush Limbaugh can give them dispensation, I dunno.

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