During the 2004 presidential campaign, Republicans and their supporters made hay of a comment by then-candidate John Kerry who tried to succinctly describe his "evolving" position on the Iraq war. The famous quote which they beat him with was "I was for it before I was against it". His explanation was that given the cherry-picked intel, he supported it, but once he found out the truth, he was against it. The explanation didn't help.
Changing one's position can be admirable when it's done after new information becomes available. It shows a willingness to consider facts and reconsider one's convictions. Changing one's position purely for political expediency, however, is the very definition of hypocrisy. I think we can find a few examples of that.
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