Gore flip-flops on issues

All his life, positions on issues were mere campaign gestures for Al Gore. They are nothing but mere tools to get him into newspapers and political office. While Gore is indeed a Democrat and liberal, it's mostly because of political convenience and an election-year "default mode." But now former journalist Gore is finding those embarrassing paper trails -- as a candidate, Congressman and reporter -- are coming back to bite him in the rear. \nThe pampered son of a wily senator from a Dixiecrat state, Gore junior saw the old Democrats make way for the new ones. The transition was one his father was unable to make. In his last successful election, Gore senior, more a liberal than a Dixiecrat, voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to appease the good ol' boys. By 1970, hated by the Nixon camp, war opponent Gore enior did not withstand a challenge from Republican Bill Brock, despite using his son for "photo op" service in Vietnam.\nSix years later, his son learned to keep the base happy. Gore junior was elected to Congress and then to the Senate from Tennessee by saying some awfully conservative things -- stuff that would never go over well now. \nGenerally, it has been ignored by the media, but not by National Review, which lovingly compiled Gore's flip-flops in its Aug. 14 edition. \nOpponents say his most dramatic flip-flop has been on abortion, but Gore has also dramatically changed his tune on homosexuality, guns and Most Favored Nation status for China. Indeed, Gore said things about homosexuality that would get Texas Gov. George W. Bush tarred and feathered.\nTake this remark to the Manchester Tennessee Times in 1981: "I think it is wrong. I don't pretend to understand it, but it is not just another normal optional lifestyle." It's a good thing Gore isn't a nonprofit agency; he would lose his United Way funding. \nIn 1987, he told the United Press International: "I also do not think we need a bill to protect the specific category -- that is, sexual preference." But now Gore supports all types of federal legislation protecting gay rights -- because he is a presidential candidate and a majority of gays vote for Democrats.\nAnd abortion? Gore supported the Hyde Amendment in 1980, telling National Right to Life he did not support using federal funds for abortion. June 26, 1984, as he battled for election to the Senate, Gore voted for House Amendment 942, which read: "An amendment to define 'person' as including unborn children from the moment of conception." An anonymous aide to his 1988 presidential campaign told U.S. News and World Report, "Since there's a record of that (1984) vote, we have only one choice. In effect, what we have to do is deny, deny, deny ... We've muddled the point, and with luck, attention will turn elsewhere."\nThere's also tobacco. In 1984, Gore's sister, a smoker, died of lung cancer. But in 1988, in his first bid for president, Gore, as reported by Newsday, rallied tobacco farmers: "I've hoed (tobacco), I've dug in it, I've sprayed it, I've chopped it, I've shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it."\nIn 1996, Gore tried to jerk a few tears at the Democratic National Convention with a moving tribute to his sister. When asked by The New York Times that year why he continued to chase tobacco donations as a candidate, he claimed, "It takes time to fully absorb the most important lessons in life."\nGore also shamelessly exploited the free trade issue -- first against it, then for it. \nSticking it to President George Bush in 1992, he told the San Francisco Chronicle, "We totally disagree with Bush and Quayle when they continue to grant Most Favored Nation status to one of the worst Communist dictatorships remaining in the world."\nDuring the next few years, Gore awkwardly toasted Chinese butchers. He made a legendary appearance at a Buddhist temple. And according to National Review, he told an audience last April, "I have stood strongly for normal trade relations with China. I reaffirm that support today."\nThis is why Republicans and independents should rally against Gore. He's no Bill Clinton. He's much worse. Clinton had morality woes and was guilty of his own flip-flops. But nothing -- and no one -- compares to Gore, who manages to be both hyper-partisan and flexible in conscience.\nIf elected, the upside for Gore is he can finally take one position on each issue -- pro-Gore. He will use the presidency to promote his poll-driven agenda. And his staff will no doubt take more relish in attack than governance, just as they did during impeachment. The result will be the kind of partisan strife Democrats supposedly oppose. That could make it just one term for Al. If he can manage to get that.