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Mitt Romney has come under a lot of criticism for his flip flopping (as seen in this video). When a Republican comes under criticism for anything, the standard response is to claim that Bill Clinton did it too, but that might not help Romney in his primary campaign. Therefore Romney had to break Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment and attack his fellow Republicans for flip flopping. Fortunately for Romeny, the criticism of the other Republicans is also valid.

In an AP interview, Romney said he was not the only candidate to have changed their position. He said, “I’d also note that everybody in this race that I know has changed their mind on certain positions and they’ve done so as they gained more experience.” From there he noted flip flops by Rudy Giuliani and John McCain:

“Senator McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts. Now he’s for them. He was opposed to ethanol. Now he’s for it. He said he was opposed to overturning Roe v. Wade. Now he’s for overturning Roe v. Wade,” Romney said, adding: “that suggests that he has learned from experience.”

AP reports he also criticized Giuliani:

As a big-city mayor, Giuliani once advocated strong federal gun controls, including a nationwide mandate to register handgun owners. He now emphasizes the Second Amendment and state-by-state solutions to gun violence. Giuliani is a solid proponent of abortion rights. In the 1990s, he opposed a late-term abortion procedure but last week issued a statement praising the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a ban on what critics call partial-birth abortion.

Romney’s accusations weren’t the only reports of Republican flip flopping today. Rudy Giuliani is dong more to appease the far right. The New York Sun reports that Giuliani is flilp flopping on his support for civil unions:

In a startling departure from his previously stated position on civil unions, Mayor Giuliani came out to The New York Sun yesterday evening in opposition to the civil union law just passed by the New Hampshire state Senate.

“Mayor Giuliani believes marriage is between one man and one woman. Domestic partnerships are the appropriate way to ensure that people are treated fairly,” the Giuliani campaign said in a written response to a question from the Sun. “In this specific case the law states same sex civil unions are the equivalent of marriage and recognizes same sex unions from outside states. This goes too far and Mayor Giuliani does not support it.”

The Democratic governor of New Hampshire, John Lynch, has said publicly that he will sign the civil union law.

On a February 2004 edition of Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” Mr. Giuliani told Bill O’Reilly, when asked if he supported gay marriage, “I’m in favor of … civil unions.”

He also said, “Marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman.”

Asked by Mr. O’Reilly in the interview how he would respond to gay Americans who said being denied access to the institution of marriage violated their rights, Mr. Giuliani said: “That’s why you have civil partnerships. So now you have a civil partnership, domestic partnership, civil union, whatever you want to call it, and that takes care of the imbalance, the discrimination, which we shouldn’t have.”

In 1998, as mayor of New York City, Mr. Giuliani signed into law a domestic partnership bill that a gay rights group, the Empire State Pride Agenda, hailed as setting “a new national benchmark for domestic partner recognition.”

These videos on You Tube of John McCain might also be considered flip flopping. In the past, McCain spoke about rapidly getting troops out of Haiti and Somalia. To be fair, these might not be considered true flip flops because he was talking about different situations, but then the Republicans were never very fair to John Kerry when they went much further in twisting his positions to claim he was flip flopping. We report, you decide. Regardless of whether these are true flip flops, many of the statements McCain made with regards to getting American troops out of Haiti and Somalia would make excellent arguments against his current position on Iraq.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=palbo-ilalU]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8TFKXHiefs]

Transcripts of McCain’s statements on Haiti and Somalia are under the fold thanks to AmericaBlog. (more…)