How Many Flip-Flops?
July 15th, 2008 -- Posted in American Politics | 11 Comments »Well in a previous post I made the statement that Senator McCain has made more flip-flops than Senator Obama but that is a given, considering his greater length of time in the political arena. Despite this length of time, flip-flops are only excusable if they express a sincere change in position based on the facts, a fellow blogger at the Progressive Politics Examiner mentioned that it would be nice to have a leader who changed his opinion based on the facts. I am biased towards Senator Obama hence I give him the benefit of the doubt most of the time but for the sake of this post, we will not excuse any flip-flops.
During my research, I discovered that Senator McCain has made a total of 61 flip-flops based on the data compiled by alternet.org. Alternet.org is a decidedly liberal media platform hence we can assume that their count is pessimistic. Senator Obama on the other hand has made anywhere from 17 - 33 flip-flops depending on which blog you are reading. Let’s take the most pessimistic scenario in both cases which leave’s Senator McCain with the greatest number of flip-flops. My two favorites from both candidates are:
13. McCain was against divestment from South Africa before he was for it.
I was born in South Africa and I know quite well what the Government did to the people there, the fact that Senator McCain opposed divestment at any stage is unfathomable.
Senator Obama supported the FISA bill despite calls from the majority of liberals to Vote NO.
I was dissapointed like most liberals given our feelings about the FISA bill, however I do understand the Senator’s position given he is running for President and a “No” vote would have fueled the fires of “weak on national security” until the general election. These fires would have given the Republican party a focused line of attack which they are unable to attain thus far.
Given the number of flip-flops by both candidates, do they really matter at this point? I am not so sure but that depends on what the media has in plan for both these candidates before the election. I found this great McCain video on politifact.org, whoever created it made one hell of a video with some cool background music:
