Flip-Flop Attack Off the Table for Obama

Few people will recognize the impact of President Obama’s newfound support for same-sex marriage on the abortion issue in the upcoming fall campaign, but his announcement today disabled an important line of attack he had against Mitt Romney.

As President Obama officially changed his position on the same-sex marriage issue, in what was described as a “hastily called TV interview” (see: Obama declares support for gay marriage), he effectively disarmed one of the bigger political missiles that his campaign team would otherwise have fired often in the fall.

Obama, an ardent pro-choice supporter, would certainly have portrayed Mitt Romney as a flip-flopper on abortion issues from his days as the Governor of Massachusetts in order to stoke uncertainty among independent voters about Romney’s decision-making and his reliability. Romney’s record on abortion is murky at best, though he has been an outspoken pro-lifer since the 2008 campaign.

Now who is the flip-flopper? Clearly, something in swing-state polling concerned the Obama team enough to push the president to change his position to further motivate his base of supporters in the Democrat Party – a sure sign of trouble for any incumbent president in an election year.

Changing a long-held policy position on a sensitive political issue so close to the fall campaign does not reflect confidence. It reveals that Barack Obama does not operate on the basis of core beliefs, but for the sake of self-preservation, quickly changing his stripes to rally his base.

This flip-flop is most certainly a calculated risk since many swing states have supported constitutional bans on same-sex marriage. Had the president continued to define the issue on the basis of state’s rights, he would still have been able to paint Romney as the real flip-flopper, but not now.

While we will have to wait and see if the risk was worth it, this flip-flop has already changed the tactical options for the Obama team as they gear-up for the fall campaign.

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