Who’s the flip-flopper?

The Associated Press in an “analysis” piece where no analysis was actually conducted, proceded to blast Barack Obama for alleged “centrist positioning” that “gives the GOP ammo” to make the flip-flopping charge that undermined Kerry four years ago.

Here’s the laundry list of supposed flip-flops:

Hence Obama has been highlighting positions anathema to the left on several issues, though some have long been part of his policy.

On Iraq, Obama said Thursday that his upcoming trip there might lead him to refine his promise to quickly remove U.S. troops from the war.

He now supports broader authority for the government’s eavesdropping program and legal immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in it, supporting the bill after some protections were added.

The handgun control proponent reacted to the Supreme Court overturning the District of Columbia’s gun ban by saying he favors both an individual’s right to own a gun as well as government’s right to regulate ownership.

Obama became the first major-party candidate to reject public financing for the general election after earlier promises to accept it.

He not only embraced but promised to expand Bush’s program to give more anti-poverty grants to religious groups, a split with Democratic orthodoxy.

He objected to the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the death penalty for child rapists, drawing attention to his support for the death penalty if used only for the “most egregious” crimes.

Obama also said “mental distress” should not count as a health exception that would permit a late-term abortion, saying “it has to be a serious physical issue,” addressing a matter considered crucial to abortion rights activists.

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So, yeah, even the AP admits some of their flip-flopping charges are little more than lesser-known centrist positions of Obama’s (in part because the AP and the rest of the MSM spent the last 18 months painting him as a doctrinaire liberal). But of all of their charges, only one, on campaign finance, is an actual direct flip-flop, and even that one is specious (given he only promised to negotiate with McCain, and McCain refused to do so). The rest on the list are simply responses to recent events that paint Obama with brush strokes that the media wasn’t expected from their die-hard liberal.

And none of their attacks today compare to the appalling list of reversals Senator McCain has racked up, including abandoning his own legislation more than once and pretending that he never made statements for which there is plenty of audio and video evidence.

So who’s the flip-flopper? The guy who changes any and all positions, even on his own legislation, perhaps due to natural senility, or the guy who’s trying to be flexible about foreign policy while being asked for his opinion on matters in the news that then happen to go against the media’s conventional wisdom?