The late Bernie Baltic used to ask politicians, who invariably wanted him to write them a check, “What are your principles?”
They would then recite their key issues or the issues they thought were key to getting Bernie to write that check. He would stop them, saying, “Not your issues — issue positions can change — your principles.”
Values are like sorta like principles. In politician speak.
“My values haven’t changed,” Vice-President Kamala Harris assured us, after being quizzed about her flip-flopping on issues including fracking (hello Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes), defunding the police and building a border wall.
CNN host Erin Burnett recently took the Democratic nominee to task, citing an investigation that counted more than 50 instances of Harris “slamming Trump’s border wall,” even while her “campaign ads actually showcase that wall.”
Hard to believe but true: Kamala’s TV spot touts Trump’s wall — his “big distraction,” as she dubbed it — as a symbol of her tough border stance.
You can’t make this stuff up.
In her 2019 book, The Truths We Hold, Kamala Harris identified “a bigger reason to oppose a border wall,” decrying such a structure as “a monument standing in opposition to not just everything I value but to the fundamental values upon which this country was built.”
Therefore … it would seem obvious that her values have indeed changed. Or perhaps the problem is that she doesn’t have any values that cannot be trumped (go ahead, pun intended) by the all-powerful need to secure her personal political advance.
That’s her paramount principle.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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