Thursday, September 30, 2004

Consider both the "Flip" and the "Flop"

The Kerry Campaign and all of its surrogates in Congress (and in the press) have been trying to assert that President Bush is participating in his own kind of flip-flopping. They site issues such as the intelligence director and further deployment of the military. Their point is that it's perfectly reasonable to change your mind as the times and circumstances change. There is some truth to this, September 11th changed a lot things. Now, I could go into detail as to how this is all different, how Senator Kerry's changes of position often occurred on the same side of September 11th, meaning he held two contrary positions after September 11th or before. But I won't do that. Instead, I'll leave it to a reader email that Jonah Goldberg posted today. It sets us all straight:
You and Kerry both miss the point of the flip-flopping charge. Changing one's opinion isn't a problem. It's changing one's opinion (the flip), then changing BACK to the original opinion (the flop). THAT is what Kerry keeps doing, and Bush doesn't.