But for me the flip flopping label sticks with Romney not so much because of style, but because of timing and expediency of his position changes. Just has too much of a finger to the wind feel to it for me.

On the other hand, I’ve seen some folks who are backing him say that they know very well that his new positions are phony, but they believe he’ll now continue to pander to the base and can be trusted to do so because he pandered to the liberals in MA! And I can’t deny there’s some logic to that too- that even if he’s not a genuine believer, the political forces will keep him in line with the conservative base. In the end, I’ll have to hope that’s true too if he gets the nomination, because I do think he’s smart enough to ‘dance with the one who brung him’.

Romney does have a pandering type quality sometimes, I’ll agree to that, too. But the flip-flop meme doesn’t strike me as being too accurately applied. I don’t think he’s changed on so many more issue’s than McCain has…the charge of flip-flopping just sticks better because of the way he comes across when speaking.

McCain’s persona, on the other hand, comes across as if he crawled  out of the cradle with the sure knowledge of how things should be.

I do believe that- because he’s not pandering. It would be far less credible if he were pretending that this was his preference all along or trying to spin it. His change in position is because of political reality, and an expression of understanding of reality is a better indicator of a politician’s future actions than is a promise with a smile on your face that you’re heart and mind has been changed on the issue.

As far as holding the two candidates responsible for their positions on McCain’s immigration bill…they’ve both changed their stance, sure. But if you think McCain, who led the effort and who still is snotty when he speaks about it is not going to held accountable in a way that Romney is not, you kidding yourself.

I think it is McCain and those on his side of the debate who are trying to parse words.

I guess I can agree that Romney’s not parsing on that issue; I don’t think you could possibly parse together any pretense of consistency when your current position is 180 degrees from your past one. Romney’s own words as recently as 2005 argue against his current position, and he seems to just ignore that and hope no one notices. His campaign spokesperson responds to that by saying that people’s views on this have evolved; OK, even if I give you that much, there’s still no explanation of why he no longer thinks it’s impossible to deport 12 million people. I listened to him just the other night talking about allowing people time to pack up their things, let kids finish the school year, and then they’d have to leave.  He said himself that that approach is impossible, and he was right- who is going to enforce that? It’s absurd, yet he doesn’t even give any explanation of a realistic plan and no one seems to be calling him on it so far.

One example of a priority on cuts that McCain has stressed is the need to address the AMT. He’s absolutely correct about that, and Congress just keeps putting off dealing with it by passing temporary patches.

McCain has also advocated a tax credit for families to apply toward health insurance; that’s a move I’d agree with too.

We have to get beyond the buzz words; it’s not just ‘did he say the right things or not?’ and ‘did he vote for or against tax cuts?’ or ‘did he vote with or against Bush?’ There’s a lot more complexity to the issues that gets lost in those discussions.

Frankly the Democrats are right to complain that the GOP ads against them often attack their record out of context (even if true, the votes are portrayed in a sinister manner without explanation of why the candidate voted one way or another.) And here we have two examples of GOP candidates doing that to each other: attacking based on votes or statements taken out of context.