Real Flip Flop

I posted earlier about a hilarious Daily Show clip that shows that Bush is just as much as a flipflopper as Kerry ever was.

Now Richard Cohen writes an impressive article in the Washington Post detailing some of Bush's numerous flipflops.

I tend to agree with what Bill Maher said on Real Time last week though: that all flipflopping means is that you are still thinking about an issue and adjusting to changing situations or new information. And while I generally don't like him, Michael Moore raised a good point when he asked Republican Rep. David Drier if Moore or Maher's conversion to the Republican party would constitute a "flip flop."

That being said, I think that Cohen ends his article with an important distinction between Bush and Kerry flipflops:

But it is the areas in which Bush's convictions have not changed that are the most troubling, and this includes a religiosity that comforts him in his intellectual inertness and granite-like beliefs that are impervious to logic, such as his tax policy and his relentless march to war in Iraq. Flip-flopping, like beauty, is in the mind of the beholder. It can be an indicator of an alert mind, one that adjusts to new realities, or it can be evidence of ambition decoupled from principle. With Kerry it's a mix of both. With Bush, who changes his positions but never his mind, it is always the latter.

On the issues that matter, Bush has only changed his mind in response to the political impossibilty of maintaining his current view. This is the case with the 9/11 commission, and it was the case with the department of Homeland Security. You will never see a Bush reversal on the need for constant tax cuts for the rich because their isn't as large a political upshot. And that's very disappointing.