Actually it's more like the return of me since I'm fairly certain I'm the one who keeps quitting and returning. But for those of you who remember some of mine and Jaz's prized discussions, we're having a fairly tame one right now concerning, well I don't even know what it's about to be honest. Ours are almost as good as Lisa's and Graham's used to get.
*Update:
And we're off...
Actually this is all in good fun. I'm posting my reply to Jazz here because I wanted to post a vid and the blogger comment section wouldn't let me do that. The argument that McCain is the real flip flopper, or that John Kerry is, in regards to Romney, is irrelevant to the points I wanted to stress in my first reply. As far as I'm concerned if you're not flip flopping you're not running for office. And so follows my reply.
--Jaz, half of what you say belongs on a McCain rant page and I’m almost positive I’m not the one to fire back with McCainisms to prove you or anyone else otherwise. I can’t help that McCain is the Republican nominee. By the looks of things tonight, it appears Huck will probably be his best pick for VP, but still Romney wouldn’t be a bad choice either. Though I’m not buying the McCain’s the true flip flopper and Romney isn’t stuff. They are both flip floppers. Heck all politicians are flip floppers.
Suggesting, via wiki, that flip flops are sudden changes of position and not a process over time is spinning at its best. The root of John Kerry flip flops begins with him returning medals in the 1970s then only later, decades later, to state that he didn’t actually return the medals but the ribbons. It is then that Republicans start with the flip flops on Kerry and not in 2004. How convenient, once again, it is for Romney that flip flops are only sudden, in mid speech changes on positions. But even, just even if that was the case, the span of 13 years like you mention is totally inaccurate. It wasn’t that Romney in 1994 while running for the senate was pro-gay rights or pro-choice or anti-gun or whatever else right wingers consider to be liberal positions, it was as early as 2002 that he claimed to be pro-choice when running for MA governor.
Here’s a vid to refresh some memory.
It wasn’t until the end of 2007 that Romney joined the NRA and it wasn’t until he was in the middle of his presidential campaign that he finally came around to declaring he was not a champion of the gay rights movement. A process over 13 years? Not hardly.
That also goes along with him not being a career politician. Maybe he hasn’t been running for office his whole life, but being the son of a former governor and Republican presidential candidate, and having a mother who also ran for numerous offices, surely doesn’t make him an outsider either. That would be like me saying Chelsea Clinton is an outsider to politics and really only made up her mind about positions after deciding to run for office for the third time. It would be hard to make that argument fly in any conversation.
I don’t know what Romney believes in his heart, I have no clue to that. Only God sees the heart. All I have is his actions and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. And his actions demonstrate that for this presidential race he has moved his position as far right as he could. That’s not a bad thing. That’s not an uncommon thing. Reagan did it in 1976, and was denied the nomination then. So hope is still very much alive for Mitt in 2012. But him changing his mind by some long term convictional process isn’t something the public has bought into just yet.
I like Romney as a candidate, that’s why I thought for sure he would win the nomination. I’m not big on his religion but as a candidate, coming from someone who has managed many campaigns, I think he’s a great candidate. I think he would have had better luck had he not tried to flip flop and just ran as himself.I do, however, particularly like the notion that Bush's unpopular polarization is part of some national hysteria rather than the fact that he's just been a really bad president. Not having one single domestic item he can claim as a success, or really one foreign item, while running up the largest deficit in the history of this country and overseeing a party that has two incumbent congressmen sitting in prison with a plethora of federal investigations underway, and also overseeing the first reduction in American household income ever on top of $3 gasoline, I'm sure has nothing to do with his unpopularity and everything to add to the hysteria.
**Update II
Once again I need to use a video so I'm going to have to post my latest reply to Jaz on the main page. To read Jaz's response please go to the comments section or click here. I should also preface this by saying please see my sarcasm when reading. There are times to be serious and times to have fun. For the most part, I'm not even sure if it's worth doing if you're not having fun. Splitting hairs in an argument usually brings out my inner sarcastic self.
Jaz, you crack me up my man. He says, point blank, in the video that he believes abortion should be safe and legal in this country. How else can that be categorized other than being pro-choice? Believing abortion should be safe and legal means women should have the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. It doesn’t mean that Roe should remain law. Yes he does go on to state Roe should be left alone, but he unequivocally states that women should have the right to choose and that he would do everything in his power to see women maintain that right. Trying to split hairs looks really silly with this argument and in legal terms there’s no such thing as pro-choice or pro-life or whatever you may call it. The real kicker though, is that if he’s merely stare decisis as you’re trying to argue then that would require allowing women to have the right to privacy. And even if Roe was overturned, all it would do is turn it back over to the states keeping abortion legal, thus still giving women the right to choose. Either way, stare or not, it’s pro-choice. Here’s another video of him proclaiming his right to choose beliefs from 2002, and not 1994 as suggested in your last reply.
I don’t use a ten second piece of video to prove Romney’s liberal, in fact in my first reply to you I state that I don’t believe Romney to be a liberal at all. I use the video to show that he tried his hardest to flip flop on issues hoping that no one would notice. He might not have a verbal gaffe that you mention, but he sure is trying to have it both ways.
I see no problem using wiki as a source at all. Where do I ever say anything about the validity of wiki? I never even questioned the definition of flip flop that wiki uses. I don’t even care. Wiki could say that a flip flop is only a flip flop when three people hear it at the same time while bouncing on one leg and I wouldn’t care at all. If I shit in a box and put a guarantee on it, it’s still just shit in a box. That’s my best Tommy Boy for ya. I don’t even know what you’re talking about concerning wiki. I merely mentioned it in a prepositional phrase and you think I’m attacking your sources. I certainly am not.
So now Romney goes from not being a lifelong politician to simply not being a Washington insider? Is that the same thing as the bastardization of the term that was originally used most prominently and incorrectly for George Bush when he ran as a Washington outsider in 2000?
Somehow I knew you would fall back on the Bush has saved us from another terror attack on our soil argument to defend Bush’s otherwise pitiful record as president. But when a president has a 29% approval rating and nearly three-quarters of the country disapprove of the job he’s doing, it’s not just Democrats who don’t like him. Unless you’re trying to argue that Dems make up about 70% of the population which I’m sure you aren’t. An election being stolen has nothing to do with Bush’s unpopularity. That argument left when he won in ’04. This is not irrational hatred or hysteria, this is Bush exhaustion besieged upon a country that wants change.**Update III
Since I'm not using a propaganda video this time, my latest reply to Jaz is in the comment section. I think what strikes me most about this whole conversation is the degree to which political correctness in it's most politically correct use of terms is so insistent by the proclaimed conservative Republican. To keep everything in order here is a quick run down.
- Jaz's original post, where I actually agreed with him that led to this whole thing.
- Our comments on his page following my agreement, which somehow turned into a lengthy, but fun, discussion of what a pro-choice stance is and Hillary as being the only polarizing politician to ever run for office unless we include George Bush in the realm of politicians who have run for office.
- Finally, the conversation is moved to my page so I can post propaganda videos of Mitt Romney where it's not actually him speaking but an actor paid to portray Big Love to essentially be used against him by those hoping to paint him as a flip flopper. And where we discuss the total irrationality behind the 70% of Americans who disapprove of George Bush versus the non-hysteric, very serious and very rational people who think he's doing a good job.
6 comments:
That's a rather high bar to set, Christopher. ;)
Then again, I am rather biased. No two bloggers got as long-winded as Graham and myself, although the two of us have had some long threads as well.
Guess I will have to pay more attention to the Jaz/Chris comments from now on. :)
Vowing not to change Massachusetts law and "claiming to be pro-choice" as you say, are not technically the same thing. If you watch the 2002 part of the video, you can see that he goes out of his way not to say that he is pro-choice.
So it's a slight mischaracterization to say that he "claimed to be pro-choice" in 2002 when the truth is he was following stare decisis, the principle of standing by that which has been decided.
The difference between being pro-choice and following star decisis is clear to me, but far be it for the "You Tube/MSM" type of argument to care enough to follow that level of legal nuance.
However, Romney himself concedes that he was "effectively pro-choice" when he ran for governor yet never could he bring himself to side against life in an issue of policy. His entire record as governor is Pro-life. I remember watching that 2002 debate featured in the video. Before the ten second clip shown in the video, Romney had spent an entire debate articulating his conservative approach to governance as an alternative to liberal vision of Shannon O’Brien. Having watched the 2002 governors race as closely as I did, and then to see someone use a ten second piece of a debate in order to prove that somehow Romney is a liberal is the real spin. Romney’s 2002 position on strictly the matter of abortion would be better described as ‘neutral’ rather than ‘liberal’. But who needs fairness and accuracy when slander and mischaracterizaion are far more effective as a political attack?
Beyond all that though, we just disagree about what comprises a flip-flop.
“Suggesting, via wiki, that flip flops are sudden changes of position and not a process over time is spinning at its best.”
First of all, what is the problem with using what wikipedia has to say? I found it to be fair an accurate definition and discussion of the topic. Talk about convenience. Because the definition in wiki doesn’t comport with you argument, all of sudden you question the definition? We could round and round as to what a flip-flop should be considered, but for the record, I agree with the first interpretation presented by wikipedia, and you follow the second newer definition that applies to changing a position over any period of time. I simply would never accuse Kerry of flip-flopping over a period of thirty years. I suppose wikipedia could be wrong and that my interpretation has been incorrect all this time, but I just think then that there are perhaps better ways to describe when someone has changed their position over a period of years. I see it as an imprecise usage of the term flip-flop to apply it so “liberally”. It’s like when people say that Bush ran for president not as a nation builder but then he flip-flopped because he ended up invading Iraq. It’s another sloppy application of the term “flip-flop”, the definition of which has apparently expanded to include almost any kind of change of position. I see why you say that all politicians are flip floppers. Using your definition, over any amount of time if a politician articulates a slightly different interpretation of an issue, they have flip-flopped.
I don’t think it’s even accurate to say that McCain flip-flopped on immigration even though he reversed his position within the span of a week. But McCain should be at least be held to the same erroneous standard of flip-flopping that he, you, and the MSM apply to Mitt Romney.
I see a true flip-flop as more of a type of verbal gaffe where a politician wants to have it both ways at the same time. The “87 million dollars” example of Kerry’s that I used is what I consider to be flip-flop. When Hillary Clinton, within the space of five minutes, couldn’t make up her mind whether she was for or against giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants could be another example of a blatant flip-flop.
So I’m not saying that Romney has never changed his position over time, I just reject that loose of a usage of the term flip-flop. The new definition would apply to so many situations that it becomes so watered down to the point where it has lost all meaning.
And while Romney is not a complete political rookie having governed a state, he is simply is not a Washington insider. If he was, he may have done better in the election.
Given that President Bush has done enough to prevent another terrorist attack since 2001, I do think there is a good amount of irrational hatred of the man based upon left over hostility from the 2000 and 2004 elections that many Democrats are still not emotionally over. An economic downturn after 55 straight months of growth isn't a good enough reason to hate someone, but feeling as though an election was stolen from you could possibly be.
You still fail to grasp the difference between saying that you'll "preserve the right to choose" and that you yourself are pro-choice. Romney has always claimed that he himself is privately pro-life, but it was for the sake of public policy that he used to essentially be pro-choice. And he genuinely did believe at one time that the public policy should be one of allowing choice. The fact is that he no longer believes that to be the correct public policy. So I grant you that it's a somewhat thin argument to split hairs or parse like this, but it's just that he does go out of his way to leave himself the "out" by never actually saying the words "I am pro-choice".
If you can find him saying those exact words in 2002 in your vast archives of anti-Romney propaganda, I'll be very surprised. But let’s examine this further then assuming your theory that he simply wants to straddle the issue for political reasons is correct. Why then did he not remain squishy on the issue when running for president? It certainly would have been easier to explain and more consistent with his initial position. You seem to believe that he, as someone who really is pro-choice, was blatantly pandering to social conservatives by running for president as pro-life while I believe that he had a genuine change of heart during his four years as governor and decided that the appropriate stance for himself when next running for public office would be to be pro-life, since that is how he ended up conducting himself as governor. The anti-Romney argument on this is to say that he conveniently switched positions strictly for political reasons having nothing to do with his own personal convictions. I would argue that the fact he admitted to changing his position on this issue was actually an inconvenience when he decided to run for president. I suppose it’s Monday morning quarterbacking of the campaign strategy, but now knowing how the public perceived him as someone who changed positions, wouldn’t have it been easier to remain exactly consistent with his position as when he ran for governor? Or better yet, he should have run as pro-life when running for governor of Massachusetts. Oh hold on a second…that’s right, he would never have been elected to office in Massachusetts as someone who was pro-life and we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. So I would suggest that if he was pandering, it was when he was running for governor. And another way of saying pandering would be to say that he was serving his constituency by essentially leaving the issue off the table. The only way to leave the issue off the table, as in not making an issue that would instantly preclude your viability as a candidate, was to be “effectively pro-choice”. Romney wasn’t running on the basis of being the arbiter of religious issues, his premise for running in Massachusetts was to clean up the economic mess, which he did.
So as someone who has run campaigns, I would ask you what you think he should have done? Massachusetts voters are so closed minded on this issue that Romney could never have been elected running as a pro-life candidate, so that was never an option. So would you have advised him to run for president as a pro-choice candidate? What if he genuinely believes the opposite? In your world, it seems that once a candidate has taken a position on the issue of choice, that they are now locked into holding that stance for eternity.
As far as the definition of flip flop, I’m glad that you now agree with the definition I initially cited that is: “…a sudden real or apparent change of policy or opinion, while trying to claim that both positions are consistent with each other.” Romney has never claimed that being “effectively pro-choice” and being pro-life are positions consistent with each other. So I’m glad that you agree with my point that strictly speaking Romney’s change on abortion, which I never argued didn’t take place, is not accurately referred to as a flip-flop.
I don’t believe that Romney is either a DC insider or a lifelong politician. As far as I know, Romney first sought public office at the age of 47 after decades working in the private sector. So I guess you’re defining “lifelong politician” as someone who has spent nearly double the amount of time working in the private sector as they have in public life. And the fact that his father was in politics does not instantly make him a politician upon being born.
On President Bush, I’m arguing about irrational hatred and you’re arguing about unpopularity. So that we can move on, I’ll buy into your explanation of his unpopularity. I was merely making the point before that there is a good amount of irrationality that feeds into his unpopularity. The fact that there are “Bush haters” is proof enough that this is the case. The word “hate” suggests a deep emotional investment. So I would argue that anyone who hates president Bush is, by definition, behaving irrationally. Having legitimate policy differences with someone and hating someone are very different things. You suggest that all those who don’t approve of Bush do so for legitimate policy reasons, while I am suggesting there is at least some irrationality and hysteria involved. So yes, before you go back and try to quote what I originally said, I’ll revise by retracting the statement that “most” of the anti-Bush sentiment is hysteria and replace it by saying that “some” of the anti-Bush sentiment has to do with irrational hysteria. If you don’t agree with that, then I can’t help you.
Just to go back to the abortion issue for a moment. Re-reading your remarks about stare decisis, I believe that you are conflating having a neutral position on abortion with being in favor of it. For the purposes of discussion, forget Romney for a second. Take this example. I am essentially neutral on the matter of choice . I see both sides of the issue. If I had to pick, I suppose I would lean towards being pro-life because that position seems to have the better argument ultimately. That life should be protected seems to be the more ethical approach to these matters of abortion, cloning, and even stem cell research. On the other hand, this issue especially here in Massachusetts, is seen through the slanted prism that it is unthinkable that a person would dare to dictate to a woman what to do with “her body”. I put that in quotes because the argument that it’s “her body” is not the whole story since there is another person involved. Abortion is not simply a matter of an individual’s rights as the pro-choice people would have us believe. But going back to my point, if I were to run for office in Massachusetts, how would I approach this? I don’t care quite enough to attempt to move the mountains that would be necessary to shift the public’s opinion one way or the other on this. If you’ve ever contemplated arguing the issue of life with a pro-choice woman for example, you’ll find it to be a losing proposition. Even if you win, you lose because as man the vibe is that you are unqualified to even be talking about this.
So this is where Romney comes back into the picture because the only way to put the issue aside and not make it the deciding issue of your candidacy in Massachusetts is to speak the language of the pro-choice position. In the end, I believe that it is unfair to crucify Romney on abortion given the context without having a suggestion as to how he could have proceeded. Seems to me that his only real choices were to not run for governor in Mass or to not have run for president at all.
I’m not failing to grasp anything Jaz. I understand perfectly what’s going on. You’re trying to walk a very thin line of what a flip flop is and isn’t and what constitutes a pro-choice stance and doesn’t. First you tried to state that Romney’s change on issues such as abortion evolved over a long process beginning in 1994 where personal conviction finally won out. But even as early as 2002 Romney admits to supporting the right to choose in cases of abortion while also admitting to being "effectively pro-choice" as recent as 2005. The long drawn out evolution from his first senate race in 1994 doesn’t stand up to Romney’s own words and actions. No I’m not using propaganda either. These are clips of Romney himself with his own words and un-doctored. Believe what you will but the lengths you go to try and split hairs only shows me how much it bothers you that Romney is a flip flopper on a very grand scale. Nor am I agreeing with your wiki definition of a flip flop. I believe I said I don’t care what wiki says a flip flop is. As far as I’m concerned a flip flop is any time you change your position on an issue. There’s no statute of limitations that I’m aware of or a grand process of soul searching that exempts someone.
Even by your latest reply you state that Romney while always being personally opposed to abortion did support the policy position that women should have the right to choose (aka a pro-choice policy). But now he no longer supports the right to choose as public policy while always maintaining his personal conviction against abortion. That I can respect. But it’s still a flip flop. Whether he’s changing his mind on the public policy or the substance of the policy, it’s still a flip flop. Besides he even admits in 2005 that his stance on abortion in the past was “effectively pro-choice.” Again a splitting of hairs.
Most of what you write in the last reply you answer for yourself and there really isn’t anything for me to add. Of course he ran as a pro-choice candidate in MA because you and I both know he had to. And then when running for president he knew he would never make it through the primary as being pro-choice, or even being as centrist as he had been while running for senator, and governor and as governor. Politically he had to refine his positions on the social hot button topics the right wing wants in a candidate. He tried his best to walk the thin line of what his positions had been in the past. It obviously didn’t work. I think in 2012 there will be enough time separating the races to where he might be able to pull it off then, but right now his monumental transformation seems a little suspicious to a lot of people and not just me, obviously.
To answer your question about what my advice would be, I had a very similar but opposite situation in 2006. I was running a senate race in Champaign, IL—the home of the University of Illinois, a college town and very liberal. The Dem candidate we had was socially conservative and ran for the US House in 1998 as a pro-life candidate. My boss, the president of the senate, demanded that our candidate switch his stance to pro-choice since the district was very liberal and the liberals had already threatened to run a third party candidate against us if we didn’t provide a pro-choice candidate. I refused rather bitterly and argued probably harder than I had ever argued before that our candidate could not and did not need to switch his pro-life stance. He had to stick to his guns. People respect that more than switching for political opportunism. People aren’t dumb, sure politicians can slide stuff past them a bunch, but people, when they want to, can see right through the mucky muck. In the end my guy followed my advice even though both of us were hammered constantly by the left wing and we won. He’s now a state senator serving his first term. Asked how we did it by our Chicago consultants, we said we took it straight to the people and showed them that our candidate was genuine. That’s what I would have advised Romney to do as well.
Sorry for the long story, but I do have some experience with this stuff.
As far as Bush is concerned I think you have it twisted just a bit. You were the one saying Bush’s unpopularity was based on irrationality and hysteria, while I was saying that it was based on a failure as a president and nothing to do with a stolen election, which doesn’t even make sense, and irrational hysteria. If there is a fair amount of irrationality that feeds into his unpopularity as you suggest, then the same applies to the Hillary, who by the way has a much greater favorability rating than Bush. The fact that there are Hillary-haters is proof enough that this is the case. The word “hate” suggests a deep emotional investment. So I would argue that anyone who hates Hillary is, by definition, behaving irrationally. You buy that one?
“You suggest that all those who don’t approve of Bush do so for legitimate policy reasons, while I am suggesting there is at least some irrationality and hysteria involved.” Where in the world do I ever suggest such? Again, I say it’s because of his failure as president and you go into some long definition about hysteria and irrationality. I never suggested that all those who don’t approve of Bush do so based on policy reasons. It’s based on a lot of stuff, mainly the fact that he’s a terrible president. If you don’t agree with that, then I can’t help you. I do know Rush Limbaugh would be proud that you are trying to argue the only valid explanation why people don’t approve of George Bush is because they are irrational and driven by hysteria; where as sound minded, serious and rational people are the only ones who support him and do so because they are so smart. That’s a classic Limbaugh approach to any argument.
After all the thin line acrobat walking and the splitting of hairs to prove that Big Love Mitt Romney has not flip flopped given that as recently as 2005 he called himself “effectively pro-choice” and as recently as 2007 finally joined the NRA and spoke out against gays, I’m supposed to believe that irrationality is something only Bush-haters are succumbing to. I’ll have to remember that one Jaz.
"...you think I’m attacking your sources. I certainly am not."
OK you're not attacking my sources, you're just rejecting them. We've finally established that we just disagree on what constitutes a flip flop. I just happened to find the definition that I use in the very first place I looked. But I'll have to remember how you define flip-flop when and if Obama takes office and finds that he can't withdraw troops as quickly as he has been promising. If he keeps troops in Iraq for any reason no matter what the circumstances, he'll have flip-flopped on the issue according to the broad application you prefer.
I would agree that anyone who hates any political figure is behaving irrationally. Sometimes people use the word "hate" when they really mean "dislike". I for one, don't hate Hillary. In fact, when she cried in NH I did feel a twinge of feeling sorry for her. On the other hand, there are those who dislike Bush who would prefer to see the man dead, if they had the choice. That kind of hatred goes too far, no matter who its directed against.
I liked the story about the pro-life Democrat, but with Romney I have no reason to defend anything other than what I believe to be the truth. I simply have a less cynical view of his change of heart than you do. In other words, I believe that he is telling the truth when giving his explanation of why he has changed stances and you don't. Maybe that's because over time I too have begun to change my mind on the very same issue from someone who, not having thought very deeply about it, was pro-choice to someone who would now sympathize with the pro-life position. Just call me a flip-flopper I guess.
Again with the wiki. I don't know why my "via wiki" set you off so much. I disagree with the wiki definition, absolutely. And I could careless if you or someone else calls Obama a flip flop. He's bound to flip flop soon enough, and when he does, I'll call him on it. In fact, since I used to work for the guy, I know of many instances where he's flip flopped. One that really stands out at me was during his campaign for the US senate in '04 he said he would support coal initiatives. The next year when he had the chance to vote on easing restrictions for coal mines, he voted against it, essentially flip flopping on a campaign promise he had made just a year earlier. But for you, calling your guy a flip flopper sends you on a two day mission in which you end up not making any sense. For me, I just go along with it. Like Romney has said many times, nobody wants a president who doesn't change his mind from time to time.
There are also those who dislike Hillary who would prefer to see her dead, if they had the choice. I never would have brought any kind of political hatred up had you not, and why you did, I have no clue.
We'll agree that you believe Romney and I don't. I see nothing wrong with coming to that conclusion. I believe he'll say whatever, whenever and however just to get elected. To me that's the worst kind of old school politics, but for you it's okay, which is also fine with me. But suggesting that I'm somehow using anti-Romney propaganda and part of a irrational hysteria directed towards George Bush is one of the funniest thing's I've ever read on a blog.
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