Whenever a politician changes his or her mind on a particular issue they are usually condemned by many flip-floppers, but what if a politician genuinely changed his mind that a different course would be better? How would you differentiate between the two?
I think the difference is when someone acknowledges they have changed their position, and explains why.
Bobby Kennedy once expressed opposition to the death penalty, when a reporter asked, “But didn’t you used to support the death penalty?”
RFK replied, “That was before I read Camus.”
The point being, only a fool believes the same thing on Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happens on Tuesday.
In my mind, flip-flopping is changing a stance on an issue for self-serving reasons, such as when it appears necessary in order to win an election. An honest change of opinion due to a re-examination of facts or a change of principles is different. Not always easy to tell the difference, though.
There are times a person must change their views. John Maynard Keynes is supposed to have said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” However, since we treat politics as more blood sport than manner of getting things done, politicians change their views at their peril much of the time.
One difference is if the change is away from an unpopular towards a more popular position, it is more likely to be insincere and a flip-flop; cf. Jon Huntsman, trying to mask his earlier moderateness to appeal to Republican primary voters.
If it is the reverse, like a couple of the NY Republican State Senators (I think it was Senators) who voted for the same sex marriage bill after earlier opposing it, then it is almost certainly a sincere change of mind. Clearly they were both taking principled stands that were contrary to their earlier beliefs, and they stated the reasons why, reasons that made eminent sense (at least to me, but I may be prejudiced).
Of course this isn’t foolproof, and there will be grey areas, but it’s a pretty good guide.
Roddy
Agreed. This sounded pretty sincere to me considering the “easy” thing for a republican to do would be to vehemently oppose SSM.
Pretty refreshing in my view and while a change of position that does not feel like a “flip-flop” to me.
Not necessarilly-New York’s political trend is quite pro-gay marriage, thus it would be of advantage to a Republican to support it to get reelected.
Romney and Romney-care would be an example of a flip flop. He’s had plenty of time to come up with an answer to why Romney-care was good and Obama-care is bad. And all he has is some States Rights bullshit reminiscent of Strom Thurmond.
Maybe. I dunno. I am not up on New York State politics.
Suffice it to say the last time this came up he voted against it. Maybe the political landscape changed and that guy made a self-serving decision. Or maybe he had a legitimate change of heart. The language he used seemed a bit unusual and sounded to me like a change-of-heart but that is only a guess on my part. I know nothing about the guy.
Except that positioning oneself according to the general trend can cost you support among your base, and one thing the Republicans have gotten very good at since Karl Rove worked to get Bush elected is energizing the base rather than capturing the center, even at the expense of the center.
Generally speaking, a statement-against-interest is a sign of a change of mind rather than a flip-flop.
The real irony here is, we should want representatives who are willing to change their stance when their electorate disagrees with them. You don’t get very good representation if that never happens.
Our political representatives should always vote according to the desire of 50.1% of their constituents? You don’t get very good representation by seating a weathervane.
Considering how close many of the elections were in the last few cycles from the POTUS down, I don’t think we are getting good representation* anyway*.
As to the OP, all that matters is the rationale given for the change. Changing positions on any subject can be a good thing if done for reason of conscience, necessity, or adaptation to new technology or scientific discovery. Less so when done for political gain, or without logical reason given. Personally I want representatives who are willing to continuously review new information and make their policies accordingly.
I might alter my position based on new information, you change your mind, but he flip-flops.
I think this sums it up for me.
If a politician can acknowledge that a previous position is different from his current one, as well as explain why he changed that position, all is good.
The worst is when you have a politican who changes position and tries to convince people that was his position all along, even though he stated otherwise.
So changing your view towards the median voter is insincere, except in this case where it somehow would hurt you, and is therefore sincere?
The question fundamentally is about status and shaming. There may be an intellectual distinction between the two, but the vast majority of the time someone uses the two terms, even on the SDMB, it’s about status, not facts. Obviously “our side’s” politicians change their mind for intellectual reasons while “their side’s” politicians are shameless flip floppers. More subtly, when an opposition politician changes his views to be more moderate, that is enlightened open mindedness, and when one of our politicians becomes more moderate, he’s being cynical.
The real test of your objectivity is whether you can call someone changing his mind to disagree with you a sincere change of mind, and call cynical someone who becomes a credibly committed activist of your cause. A real rationalist would observe nearly no correlation between high-minded/cynical and “our team”/“other team” - hysterical partisanship aside, people on the other end of the spectrum are not evil mutants whose instincts and biases you do not share. Virtually none of us are there yet.
I was responding to Curtis/Qin, who said that it wasn’t really contrary to a Republican in New York’s interest to vote for gay marriage because the general trend is towards acceptance of gay marriage. A good thumbnail way of detecting whether or not it’s a flip-flop or a sincere change of mind is whether or not the change costs you. If it does, then it seems sincere; if it doesn’t, then it seems like pandering.
I was saying that it’s still not in a Republican’s interest to vote for gay marriage because Republicans these days tend to concentrate on energizing the base rather than capturing the center, and the Republican party has been very consciously driving moderates out of the party. For any Republican to vote for gay marriage is likely a costly move, and so likely a real change of mind rather than a flip-flop.
The problem with the “flip flopping” charge is that nowadays proposed statutes can cover so many topics that it is very likely that a representative will vote for a statute that on the whole he agrees with, but which has one segment he disagrees with, and his opponent will charge him with flipflopping on that one tiny segment.
When someone changes their mind from a position I agree with to one that I don’t, that’s flip-flopping. When someone changes their mind from a position I disagree with to one I agree with, that is reasoned decision making. 
What jtgain said, pure and simple. If you like the outcome, then the person is reasonable. If you dislike it, they’re flip-flopping.
To me there is a difference between changing your mind because the facts underlying your position have either changed or been disproven (for example, changing your mind on supply side economics because the last 30 years have proven its bullshit is fine) and changing your mind because it is politically expedient (saying you are against Obamacare as the worst evil in the world when you supported it when it was proposed by Dole or when you were governor of massachussetts when there has been no event or rationale that would cause the change in position; saying that you now support the Ryan bill after you got push back from people for calling his radical plan “social engineering from the right”).