Kudlow cited WSJ editorial board member to claim "McCain is no flip-flopper," but WSJ already noted "McCain's Tax Reversal"
In his February 9 nationally syndicated column, CNBC host Lawrence Kudlow wrote: "[Sen. John] McCain [R-AZ] is no flip-flopper. ... Think of his duty-honor-loyalty persona, to borrow from my friend Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal." Strassel wrote in her Wall Street Journal column on February 1 that McCain is "no flip-flopper, and his duty-honor-loyalty persona would stand in stark contrast to both Clintons." Strassel also wrote: "Like or dislike Mr. McCain's views, Americans know what they are." However, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, of which Strassel is and was at the time a member, published an editorial on February 18, 2006 -- headlined "McCain's Tax Reversal" -- noting that after voting against President Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, McCain voted in 2006 to make some of them permanent. Moreover, the Wall Street Journal editorial suggested McCain's "reversal" was politically motivated, writing: "Our guess is that Mr. McCain may also be looking ahead to the 2008 GOP Presidential primaries, which won't be kind to candidates who've voted for tax increases."
From Kudlow's February 9 column:
A short while back, I heard former Bush chief of staff Andy Card give an engaging talk at an Awakening conference in Sea Island Georgia. Card asked: What's the most important character trait for a successful president? And he answered: The courage to be lonely. In other words, the guts to make tough decisions. Not poll-driven, politically driven, or selfish decisions, but decisions made on the basis of what is right and what is wrong and what is best for America.
McCain is no flip-flopper. Just think about his stance against ethanol subsidies in Iowa and federal hurricane insurance in Florida. (And Florida's Gov. Crist still supported him!) Think of his duty-honor-loyalty persona, to borrow from my friend Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal. Duty-honor-loyalty is part of the American military code of conduct. In this most important sense, McCain is a profoundly conservative man. When he makes a promise, he keeps it.
And don't forget his resiliency, consistency, and backbone. Here was a man moving around the country, without money and resources. He remained resolute on winning in Iraq, on the surge, and on the need to prevail abroad if we are to remain safe at home. Democrats were talking defeat. Republicans were hardly talking at all. But McCain soldiered on. Armed with courage, strength, and character, he kept his eyes on the prize. This may be the greatest political comeback in presidential history.
Fact: McCain is a Flip-Flopper
Fact: The media doesn't think so. They think he's a straight talkin maverick.
Fact: Object till the cows come home, it won't make any difference.
Gramps, the maverick does "reversals".
Wow, do all pundits do as little research as Mr. Kudlow? Maybe he should have googled McCain, ethanol and flip-flop. He would have only found 5,480 hits!
I'm amazed at the low level of punditry and journalism that passes in this country. When I was in college, our editorial board actually fact-checked. Why isn't this a requirement anymore?
McCain is no flip-flopper
...but the person who wrote that then relieves themselves of any burden, of trying to understand or even explain, whatever "reversal" or "shift" or change of opinion on any National Policy issue it, that Mr. McCain might be appearing to evidence.
They neglect to even mention what National Policy opinion it is that Mr. McCain is cited as "flip-flopping" on, much less understanding or explaining it.
This is the utter worthlessness of that stupid term "flip-flop".
Everybody seems able to say it, almost effortlessly and with some amount of amusement, but then nobody asks for the particulars about what is being referred to... they don't ask whoever it is that just said "flip-flopper" (such as the writer cited in the above item) about the charge, and for good reason I'd bet: Because they either don't know or don't care about the particulars, or can't understand or explain them...
But they can say the idiot term "flip-flopper", either in defense of Mr. McCain (as is done in the citation here), or in a charge against him.
Just how worthless is this label or token in the currency of Political Discourse?
It's like people were trying to trade with you in the marketplace, and when it came time for them to give you money, they gave you bills or notes with the denominations smudged and illegible, so that you had no idea as to their worth...
Not only is that what people are doing when they parrot back and forth the idiot charge of "flip-flopper", but the same is true of most of the other little coined labels we see hurled about in these campaigns... "liberal" "conservative" "hawk" "maverick" "charismatic" "electric" "inauthentic"...
If the Political Forum were (as I said) like a marketplace, then I would say that everybody who is trading in such indecipherable and smudged notes is either DEFRAUDING someone, or being DEFRAUDED!
Haven't we seen and heard enough of this crap already?
Are words really so expensive, that we can't spend the few and several more, to be better understood, but we must condense them always into little idiot coins, like "flip-flopper"?
Forgive me if I protest a little too strong, but hearing that term during the 2004 presidential campaign, so often applied to Sen. Kerry that I began to think it was a natural adjective to his name... it approached the level of nausea the word caused in me, to hear it so often, but without it ever being expanded sensibly out, into just what "reversal" or "shift" or change of National Policy opinion the man was supposed to have undergone...
Which would have been the start of substantial Political Discourse, in that we could then have asked the man to explain himself, and his supposed change of mind...
An explanation we will not get from Mr. McCain (and did not get from the writer in the above citation), by way of accepting the meaningless and worthless note of "flip-flopper" in the exchange.