Obama’s Brazen Reversals, page 1

This is a wonderful little opinion piece on the policy shifts and reversals in the Obama campaign that seem to be so frequent now in the wake of his receiving the Democratic nomination.

To be completely honest, I can hardly keep up with them all, and was relieved to see that someone else had done all the work for me.

I have nothing against Barack Obama, I just dislike his Clintonesque parsing of words to provide wiggle room should public opinion go south on his most current position.

You’ll notice Barack Obama is now wearing a flag pin. Again. During the primary campaign, he refused to, explaining that he’d worn one after 9/11 but then stopped because it “became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism.”

So why is he back to sporting pseudo-patriotism on his chest? Need you ask? The primaries are over. While seducing the hard-core MoveOn Democrats that delivered him the caucuses — hence, the Democratic nomination — Obama not only disdained the pin. He disparaged it. Now that he’s running in a general election against John McCain, and in dire need of the gun-and-God-clinging working-class votes he could not win against Hillary Clinton, the pin is back. His country ’tis of thee.

In last week’s column, I thought I had thoroughly chronicled Obama’s brazen reversals of position and abandonment of principles — on public financing of campaigns, on NAFTA, on telecom immunity for post-9/11 wiretaps, on unconditional talks with Ahmadinejad — as he moved to the center for the general election campaign. I misjudged him. He was just getting started.