GOP logic: Up is Down and Down is Up

In today's Washington Post, John F. Harris writes of how Republicans have maneuvered to paint John Kerry with the "flip-flop" label, even as George W. Bush has repeatedly been guilty of his own about-faces on public policy.

Among them:

"In 2000, Bush said he would include carbon dioxide on a list of air pollutants requiring federal oversight, a stand he abandoned within weeks of taking office. A month after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush's spokesman said the president believed a homeland security department that Democrats proposed was just not necessary.' A year after that, Bush had switched course and was lashing some Democrats for not moving quickly enough to approve the agency.

While Bush professes himself a strong free-trader, most other free-trade proponents said he bent on principle in March 2002 when he ordered tariffs on imported steel -- a move that resonated politically in electorally important industrial states such as Pennsylvania. Facing an escalating global trade dispute, he lifted the tariffs at the end of last year."