海角大神

Fresh off a strong second-place showing in the聽entirely meaningless straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker聽certainly seems to be getting in line with conservative thinking on the topics of the day:

This contrasts significantly with聽comments that Walker made during a July 2013 interview聽with a local Wisconsin newspaper鈥檚 editorial board, as well as during聽a Politico-sponsored conference in February of that year:

This isn鈥檛 entirely surprising, of course. Walker is quite obviously preparing to run for president in 2016, a possibility he likely wasn鈥檛 considering nearly as seriously some two years ago when these questions first came up, and the truth of the matter is that support for any form of immigration reform that involves what the tea party crowd considers to be 鈥渁mnesty鈥� for the 12 million or so undocumented immigrants estimated to be in the country is pretty much a deal breaker. Jeb Bush鈥檚 support for such reforms 鈥� and his continued insistence, even this past week at CPAC, that there will eventually have to be some kind of legalization for these people 鈥� is the main reason that he is rejected by the hard right. Bush鈥檚 political prot茅g茅, and possible 2016 rival, Marco Rubio was once a tea party darling after his win in the Florida US Senate race in 2010, but his star faded quickly two years ago when he became one of the most prominent Republicans to cross the aisle and support the Senate immigration reform bill. Indeed, Rubio finished worse in the CPAC Straw Poll than Bush himself did, which is perhaps the greatest indication of how far his star has fallen among the hard-right wing of the Republican Party thanks to his support for immigration reform. And that happened notwithstanding the fact that Rubio has since backed away from the Senate bill, has criticized the DREAM Act, and has opposed the president鈥檚 initiatives for temporary immigration relief, such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA). Given all of this, I suppose, Walker likely considered it to be in his interests to play it safe on immigration by backing the restrictionists rather than staking out the riskier pro-reform position taken by Bush and Rubio.

I鈥檓 often reluctant to criticize politicians on the flip-flopping charge because there isn鈥檛 necessarily anything wrong with someone who changes their mind. Should a politician, or anyone for that matter, be forced to stick with policy positions they took in the past just because they鈥檙e on the record? If that were the case, then public opinion would never change on any issue. Take the issue of same-sex marriage, for example. It wasn鈥檛 that long ago that the vast majority of Americans opposed the idea of same-sex marriage, as did the majority of politicians in both political parties. Over time, public opinion has changed on that issue and the public has become more accepting of the idea of marriage equality, which has also led politicians to do the same. President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden all opposed same-sex marriage and have since changed their position. The same goes for countless others. Are they to be denounced as 鈥渇lip-floppers鈥� because they changed their mind? That seems to me to send the wrong signal since we want people to change their minds when they are wrong.

Walker鈥檚 problem, of course, is that he clearly has changed positions on this issue and it鈥檚 hard to argue that he hasn鈥檛 done so for purely political purposes. Prior to backing away from his previous support for immigration reform, Walker had been receiving criticism from many on the right for his previous support for the idea and, heading into CPAC, it was seemingly one of the few marks against him from people on the right. Changing his position so blatantly and, at least so far, with little explanation for exactly why his previous support for some kind of legalization for undocumented immigrants changed, and, unless he鈥檚 able to, it鈥檚 hard to believe that it was for anything other than blatantly political reasons. That鈥檚 the kind of 鈥榝lip-flopping鈥� that it鈥檚 hard to defend.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.