Flip...Flop...

Flip?

Rick Moore thinks that Mitt Romney has changed his position on abortion in yet another way. If that perception takes hold among Rick's fellow conservatives, Romney's efforts to cultivate conservatives will come to grief.

He writes:

The fact that Romney has articulated several different positions on abortion tells me he really has no core belief in this issue, but is making statements based on what he thinks the listener wants to hear, and that's a problem. If you know what you believe it should be that hard to articulate it each and every time consistently.

All that aside, abortion is still an issue about which the president has very little control. He can't ban it or institute it. He can control funding to a small degree and can veto or sign legislation that comes his way. And I still believe that is is wrong to make this the one factor upon which someone makes their voting decision. We should be more worried about the things the president can control and not so much about the things he can't.

In the final analysis, my guess is that the perception of Mr. Romney as a flip-flopper is a far bigger threat to his candidacy than his Mormon religion. Most Christians, for example, even most evangelical Christians, are willing to vote for a Mormon for President so long as they believe the candidate will refrain from using the presidency to impose his or her faith on others. But if changes in political positions appear to be based on positioning and expedience, candidates will be universally villified.

I'm inclined to agree with Romney's handlers that the less they say about his religion the better. (Although, since Romney's campaign was the first to bring up the "Mormon issue," it may be hard for him to button up on the matter now.) But he probably needs to preemptively take on the "flip-flop" perceptions sooner, rather than later.

Whether Rick is right in saying that Romney's recently articulated position is another flip on the abortion issue, I don't know. But I do think that he's right in saying that the President has little direct control over abortion.