Flip-flopper.  Like racist or isolationist, it’s not a word that you’d like to have attached to your name.  In recent years, it has been used to whap the likes of John Kerry and Mitt Romney over the head.  It means that your finger is in the wind, that you are not a Decider, that, like most politicians, you’re full of shift.

Now comes the godless leftist media once again to pound “psychologist and author” Dr. James Dobson with flip-floppery, since he predictably ate his own words, as told to the New York Times last year: “If neither of the two major political parties nominates an individual who pledges himself or herself to the sanctity of human life, [I] will join others in voting for a minor party candidate.”

That was then, when Rudy Giuliani or—gasp!—John McCain threatened to capture the GOP nomination.  Now—well, now we have Sarah Palin, who neither flip-flops nor blinks.  And technically, she was in fact nominated by a major political party.

Sarah Palin, we are told, is a sign, a winkie-winkie to the pro-life community that the long-awaited Roe-reversal is in the cards.  Just one more election; just one more justice.  “Change is coming!”

Senator McCain, as he proclaimed at Saddleback, to a stirring round of applause, believes that life begins at conception.  (Obama, pay grade notwithstanding, seems to think otherwise; or perhaps it is merely his “faith” that teaches him about the origin of life, and God forbid that something so personal as faith should ever pole-vault over the Wall of Separation.)  Is abortion murder, or infanticide?  Well, you bet, says John McCain, since life begins at conception.  So here is this human life, made in the image of God, the product of dinner-and-a-movie, when “no” didn’t mean “no” (read: rape).  Kill it, says John McCain.  It’s a human life, but it’s small, it’s out of sight—and hasn’t this young woman been through enough?

John McCain has flip-flopped on Roe v. Wade.  Whether purely out of political expedience or not, we cannot say.  But we can say that it has been politically beneficial to him.  He’s no longer talking about “family conferences” and never, ever wanting to overturn Roe, although a woman named Cindy McCain, who claims to know what he really thinks, said otherwise.  “We contacted the McCain campaign to clarify Cindy McCain’s position on abortion,” reports Katie Couric.  “They told us that, like Laura Bush, Mrs. McCain does not favor overturning Roe v. Wade, which guarantees the legal right to an abortion.”  Perhaps her husband hasn’t flip-flopped after all.

These days, “life begins at conception” and “culture of life” flow easily from the McCain campaign, but when pressed, the candidate has only said that he would like to see the culture of life grow to the point where Roe would become irrelevant.  As long as he wants to make exceptions for “rape and incest,” however, Roe will remain very relevant.  Sarah Palin, on the other hand—and commendably—would not allow abortion at all; they have agreed to disagree.

John McCain, like Hillary, Pelosi, Barack, and Michael J. Fox, has thought long and hard about embryonic stem-cell research and has come to a very special, personal, and painful decision.  Unlike the rest of the aforementioned cavalcade of stars, he promotes a culture of life and knows when life begins.  Kill ’em anyway.  People have diseases.  Make a pill; down the hatch.  Sarah Palin, once again, agrees to disagree.

Wait, we are reminded by both the NRLC and NARAL, Sarah Palin is a symbol, a window into the true soul of John McCain.  And through that window, we can see just the sort of justices that a McCain administration would nominate.  As first lady, Cindy McCain would not nominate Supreme Court justices; then again, neither would Sarah Palin, as vice president.  And as for windows, no one seems to disagree that, at least for a very long while, Joe Lieberman (one of McCain’s many “safe, legal, and rare” buddies) was his choice for running mate.  That choice would not have energized a significant segment of voters.  Palin has.

If the primary source of “energizement” for the McCain ticket is Sarah Palin’s views on abortion and ESCR, another letdown awaits the “culture of life.”  Sadly, James Dobson knew that a McCain administration would mean this, but, like a growing host of “excited” antiabortionists, he flip-flopped and fell for winkie-winkie.