Opportunism knocks

Earlier this year, three-fourths of the Senate voted in favor of the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization. Among those who voted for the resolution were Hillary Clinton, Richard Durbin, Harry Reid, and Chuck Schumer. Obama voted against it.

Yesterday at the AIPAC conference, however, Obama expressly stated that the IRGC was a terrorist organization. His campaign explained his opposition to the resolution naming the IRGC a terrorist entity by claiming that the resolution contained language about military action. But this is false, and transparently so — if it had contained such language Clinton, Durbin, Reid, and Schumer would have opposed it.

Obama’s change in position on the IRGC is mirrored in other flip-flops, with more likely to come. On the vital issue of the Iraq war, for example, Obama spoke out against it as a state legislator. But when running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, he declared that there is little difference between his position on Iraq and that of President Bush. After his election, differences quickly reappeared, and Obama’s position continued to evolve over the next several years. When it comes to Iraq, Obama makes the John Kerry of 2004 look constant.

There’s not much mystery any more about what Obama is. He’s a default hard-leftist with a streak of opportunism as big as all outdoors. When he’s competing in a general election, the opportunist mode naturally prevails. But if he ‘s elected president, especially assuming (as I do) a solid working majority in Congress, we can expect Obama to default to his hard-leftism.

CORRECTION: Obama did not vote against the resolution to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. As Scott points out above, he missed the vote. However, on the day of the vote Obama issued a statement in which he said he would have voted against the resolution. And during a debate shortly after the vote, Obama criticized Hilary Clinton for voting in favor of the resolution.

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