hopefully a constructive political debate

Hanna
Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:25:38 +0000

“I have never had a problem with pols changing their positions as long as they have a valid reason and not merely political expediency.”

Right. To consider two Republicans:

Take Dick Cheney and gay marriage. Not that he actually does anything to make gay marriage happen, but I believe that decades of watching his daughter, and later her partner, genuinely made him appreciate aspects of the issue he failed to understand before. I buy, and I grudgingly respect, his change of heart on this.

On the other hand, take Mitt Romney and abortion. I don’t believe that anyone who’d been a missionary and a bishop in a strongly anti-abortion church, and who went to Harvard Law School, and had been a player in electoral politics since 1994, and was pro-choice after all that experience, conveniently had a 180-degree epiphany in late middle age. Maybe I could buy it if he suddenly converted to a new religion at that age, or something. But Mitt? No way. He never cared about substantive issues one way or the other; he was just going with the flow. The wind blows in a different direction now, so watch him sail to the right.

Where there’s a slew of new data, I question anyone who DOESN’T change positions. Take John Edwards. He voted to authorize the Iraq war, and it turned into a giant fiasco (with no WMD), so now he says, “We shouldn’t have trusted this president with that power. I wish I’d cast a different vote.” Hillary? We’re still waiting.