Topic: Kerry's "flip flopping" on Iraq, Bush's latest ad
It should come as no surprise to anyone intimately familiar with politics that Bush has released another ad characterizing Kerry as a flip-flopping, ultraliberal that wants to raise your taxes and is out of touch with voters and reality itself.
Agree with the charges Bush makes or not, this is a nearly unprecedented smear campaign in terms of modern politics. Yes, in the past we have accused candidates of everything from being traitors to being French. Although that might excite some of the Republican base in itself. I can see it now... FRENCH fries and HEINZ Ketchup. "Whose side is Kerry really on?" Vote Bush for war w/ France!
I don't accept the charge that Kerry is a "flip flopper" in particular. This is for a few reasons.
First and primarily is because most of the "evidence" Bush-Cheney '04 uses are quotes and votes taken out of context or edited slyly.
More on that at
http://blog.johnkerry.com/rapidresponse … .html#more
Second is, I believe people are allowed to change their minds. If nobody ever changed their minds, progress would be basically impossible. I suppose the key thing here is whether Kerry changed his mind for political reasons or whether it was some difference with the situation. Clearly, this is something he needs to do a better job of explaining.
Finally, some of what Kerry actually did say/do doesn't qualify as a "flip flop" or changing his mind at all, merely an addition to his opinion or another issue entirely.
Voting against the 87 billion dollars, for instance, was not a flip flop. It wasn't refusing to fund the soldiers either, really. It was a refusal to give Bush a blank check for money that he should have requested at the beginning of the war anyways. Had Bush been more honest about the cost of the war, that bill wouldn't have been needed. Had they rolled back some of Bush's tax cuts to help pay for this expenditure in the face of mounting budget deficits, it would have helped. I doubt Kerry would have voted against this if it had any real chance of not passing anyways (the vote in the negative was only 12, after all, as Bush reminds us so frequently).
Kerry calling leaving the soldiers without funding "irresponsible" and then voting against it anyways isn't a flip flop, since he never said he was voting for it. It is just self-ridicule that makes Kerry look rather silly.
The now infamous "I voted for the 87 bil. before I voted against it" is not tantamount to a flip flop either. There is a reason for this, a very fundamental reason that is easy to understand. He actually did vote before it before he voted against it.
And that vote wasn't a flip flop either, because one was a vote on the amendment and the other was a vote on the bill itself.
He voted for an amendment to the bill that would pay for it through Bush's tax cuts being reduced, and he voted against it when that amendment got shot down.
Welcome to multi-dimensional thought, GOP backers. Try it sometime, it works nicely when you're in a jam.
I won't be a partisan for a split second and say one thing candidly. It was a huge mistake for Kerry to vote against that 87 billion dollars, after voting for the war. It gave Bush good political ammo. It isn't as if his vote stopped its passage though, it was more of a protest vote over fiscal irresponsibility and the tax cuts.
Even though the war is now viewed as a "mistake" by a good margin of people and others think Bush lied and many disapprove of Bush on Iraq, voting for the bill was the thing to do. Because he wasn't voting for the war, he was voting to give Bush the authority to goto war. That is a very serious difference.
That and if he hadn't voted that way, Republicans could call him liberal anti-war candidate and in addition say he flip flopped over previous tough rhetoric against Iraq supporting regime change.
Even if Kerry is a "flip flopper" for political reasons, he is less serious than what Bush is.
Bush is a liar. Bush isn't just a liar, he is a bad liar. Bush lied about WMD, Iraq's ties to terrorism, distorted the difference between Al-qaeda and Hussein and said we would be welcomed as liberators.
Furthermore, Bush is a bully. He bullied the Congress into accepting his war with tough rhetoric, halftruths and bad intelligence. He did the same to the American people, and tried it on the world community.
His lack of planning for winning the peace, lack of ability to work well with our allies and lack of numbers in general have led to an unstable and bloody occupation.
George W. Bush is a liar, a bully, an idiot and a hypocrite.
Bush has changed what the case for war with Iraq was many times, switched positions on whether WMD had been found or not, whether Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11 and many inquiries into the events surrounding 9/11.
He also didn't want to goto the UN originally, from what most inside sources show. Bush knew he wanted to goto war long before he did.
I give Bush credit in that regard. He will go after whatever it is that he wants at any cost to anyone involved at anytime and anywhere.
He is decisive about most things, but that sort of one-minded stubborn demeanor can be a very bad thing in foreign policy.