"Flip-flop" or CHANGE for the better?

Let's face it, I am not a happy voter these days... I think our choices for President are "Bad" and "Worse". As a conservative I am scared about what John McCain will do to an already weak Republican party in the long term, while as an American I am scared to death of what Barack Obama will do to our country in his first six months, much less four years. Quite frankly, I am undecided about which one is worse in the long run and therefore I honestly haven't decided what I'll do on Election Day. My dilemma is not whether to pull the lever for Obama vs. McCain, but rather whether to pull the lever at all or to spend November 4th at the local watering hole drinking my misery away.

As a conservative voter, I am NOT ready to accept the "current McCain" and don't think that other conservatives should be so ready to throw their support behind him as the de facto option just yet. But, that's fodder for another blog... In the meantime, people ask me what it would take for me to vote for McCain, and as of right now there are two things: 1) select a conservative veepe, and/or 2) change his "maverick" position on many of the issues which I feel are key to the welfare of this country. One of those issues is Energy, and I'm happy to report that McCain is starting to come around on that issue. Of course, this change in tune is causing Environmentalists everywhere to chastise him as a "flip-flopper" which seems to be the label of the day. But is he a flip-flopper based on this issue?

What constitutes a flip-flop? Is the label only used when the culprit flops to a position counter to our own ideology? What evidence do we need in order to determine whether the candidate has had a genuine change of heart versus a mere desire to get votes? I'm not sure that I know all the answers, but I do know that we each need answer those questions for ourselves before criticizing the candidate solely for changing their positions on issues. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't use the same label to categorize a person who has gone to the same church for 20 years then suddenly claims negligence and abandons it because they get some heat in the press versus a person who voted based on their naive inability to predict a future oil crisis in previous years then modifies their position when faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Regardless of one's political persuasion, one has to acknowledge that the same phrase cannot be used to describe these two polar situations.

Politicians and political analysts on both sides of the aisle place too much emphasis on whether or not a candidate holds his ground regardless of the issue and circumstances at hand. I am certainly guilty of denigrating politicians for flip-flopping on issues (and McCain has certainly been the subject of my rants in the past), but let's not cut off our noses to spite our faces here...in the case of Energy we're ALL at fault! As a nation we've consumed excessively (I myself owned one of the largest SUV's on the market until 6 months ago) while our political leaders on both sides have forced us into dependency on far less stable (and in some cases hostile) countries for a resource which is absolutely critical to our prosperity, all the while claiming victorious on the "green" front. Whoopee! That got us far, huh?

[Side Note: I wonder how Environmentalists can sleep so much easier knowing that the baby seals in the Gulf of Mexico are safe from those horrible American oil companies while forcing the fish in Persian Gulf to fend for themselves? Do they have that much more faith in Saudi Arabian and Russian oil companies, or is this just another Inconvenient Truth? But I digress...]

The fact that we've all been irresponsible to this point is undeniable. Republican, Democrat, Independent...doesn't matter, they (we) have been wrong all along. But the issue at hand now is not how or why we got here, but how we're going to respond. To hold our ground and refuse to budge positions in order to avoid being deemed a 'flip-flopper' would be irresponsible and nothing short blind stupidity. So, on this issue, I salute John McCain for making a "CHANGE" for the better. Bravo!