Romney not alone on shifts in stances

Mitt Romney's political opponents miss few chances to tag him as a "flip-flopper," aggressively highlighting his shifts on abortion, immigration, and gun control, among others. One mystery critic even dresses up as Flipper the dolphin and shadows Romney at Republican events.

It has largely worked: Romney has struggled to shake that label, and bloggers, pundits, and the media have seized on discrepancies between his past and current positions as he pursues the Republican presidential nomination.

But Romney is not the only leading GOP candidate whose policy views have evolved or changed altogether in the early heat of the 2008 presidential campaign. His main opponents in the Republican primary, Senator John McCain of Arizona and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, have also shifted their stances or their tone on major issues -- indeed, on some of the ones Romney has -- as they've worked to win primary voters. And Romney is starting to make sure people take note of his rivals' fluctuations.

Giuliani, who led New York City as a tough-talking, socially liberal Republican, has distanced himself from several past positions as he's tried to transform himself into a palatable choice for conservatives in early primary states such as Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

He's abandoned his past calls for strict gun control. He now speaks favorably of a flat tax, an idea he disdained a decade ago. And he's moved to the right on abortion, an issue that once made him an acceptable candidate to abortion rights advocates.

Part of Giuliani's pitch to conservatives is that he supports the Hyde Amendment, a 30-year-old measure restricting federal Medicaid funding for abortions. But in his 1993 mayoral campaign, Giuliani made clear he did not support the Hyde Amendment -- his campaign at the time, in an effort to appeal to female voters, handed out campaign literature saying he opposed it, according to a report in The New York Times that year.

Giuliani also raised eyebrows in praising the US Supreme Court decision earlier this month that upheld a federal ban on late-term abortion. "The Supreme Court reached the correct conclusion in upholding the congressional ban on partial birth abortion," Giuliani said in a statement. "I agree with it."

But Giuliani opposed such a ban during his 2000 Senate campaign against Hillary Clinton, telling NBC's Tim Russert: "I think the better thing to do is to leave that choice to the women, because it affects her probably more than anyone else."

As for McCain, who has long prided himself on his straight-talking, take-it-or-leave-it style, he, too, has veered from some of his past positions.

He has changed his mind on President Bush's tax cuts -- he had voted against them and opposed making them permanent; now he says they should be made permanent, and that not doing so would be a tax hike. He now calls himself a supporter of ethanol, the corn-based fuel important to Iowans, despite blasting federal subsidies for it in the past as "highway robbery." And he's taken a slightly tougher line on illegal immigration.

McCain has also made conflicting comments about whether he believes Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, should be overturned. He told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999 that he did not support a repeal . But earlier this year, speaking to about 800 people in Spartanburg, S.C., he sought to assure conservatives that he did.

"I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned," McCain said, according to the Associated Press.

McCain's campaign says he had proposed his tax cuts before Bush did, that he still opposes federal subsidies for ethanol, that he simply misspoke in his 1999 interview about Roe v . Wade, and that his voting record is consistently "pro life."

"John McCain is a common-sense conservative whose 25-year record speaks to spending restraint, winning the war on terrorism, and a culture of life," said campaign spokesman Danny Diaz. "Senator McCain will continue to stand up for his conservative values and tackle the important issues confronting our nation."

Giuliani's campaign says he has never called for a flat tax, and that the late-term abortion ban Giuliani now supports is different from the one he opposed in 2000 because it follows expert testimony about how the procedure affected a mother's health.

"It's clear that Republican voters are responding to Mayor Giuliani because he says what he means and stands by his positions," campaign spokeswoman Maria Comella said in a statement.

The shifts by Giuliani and McCain are significant not only because Romney has been so dogged by the charge that he's flip-flopped, but because Giuliani and McCain owe much of their political appeal to their reputation as leaders willing to stand by what they believe, not what's necessarily popular.

"You've got to run based on who you are," Bloomberg News quoted Giuliani as saying recently in Spartanburg. "If you do it that way even people who disagree with you sometimes respect you."

Thus Giuliani's shift on abortion, for example, comes as an "extreme disappointment" to abortion rights supporters who used to consider him one of their own, said Kelli Conlin, president of NARAL Pro-Choice New York.

"What people liked about him is that he was a straight-shooter who told it like it was," Conlin said. "What's really disappointing about his statements of the past week is it's become painfully obvious that he's morphing into a true politician that really is trying to figure out the way the winds blow on various issues."

Romney, in some of his most detailed comments to date about his opponents, sought in an interview with the AP last week to highlight some of the changes or reversals McCain and Giuliani have made.

"Senator McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts. Now he's for them. He was opposed to ethanol. Now he's for it. He said he was opposed to overturning Roe v. Wade. Now he's for overturning Roe v. Wade," Romney said. "That suggests that he has learned from experience."

Romney continued: "Mayor Giuliani has made a number of changes over his career, and there are places where I've made changes."

Political analysts say Republican presidential candidates have a long history of shifting their positions and language to cater to the GOP primary electorate, a more conservative bunch than many candidates have had to court in the past. Some analysts say Romney's shifts have gotten more attention because of their magnitude -- that while other candidates have also changed positions, Romney's switches have been more significant.

"I think you can certainly move your political positions within a career and even within a campaign, but when you trade in your old philosophy for a new one, and you did it overnight across the board, it smacks of opportunism," said GOP political operative Roger Stone, who is not aligned with any candidate.

It's also evident, however, that Romney's flip-flops have been more publicized. Republican political consultant Whit Ayres said that's partly because Romney hails from the most liberal state in the country, and that he's shifted more fully on "hot-button, highly emotional issues frequently with a moral dimension."

But Benjamin Ginsberg, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, said McCain has insulated himself with his "image of steadfastness." (Romney's campaign counsel is also named Benjamin Ginsberg.) And he said that Giuliani's other "negatives" have drawn more attention. Giuliani, for example, has taken heat for his close ties to former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who withdrew from consideration to become US homeland security secretary amid allegations of improprieties.

"The fact that the focus is on [Romney's] inconsistency to me suggests that people don't have a lot of ammunition to use against him," Ginsberg said.

Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.