Trouble now is, some of his supporters see him changing some of his
promises. As he appeals more to moderates and independents, liberal
Democrats are finding his new outreach unappealing.

This AP analysis claims the Republicans are taking advantage of Obama’s change. It’s
clearly written by one of his supporters, but all things in
perspective, it makes some interesting points about the candidate.

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.

And the big one:

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.

Back to that in a minute…

The AP analyst sounds more like an apologist, which we get a lot in the American media on behalf of the Illinois senator.

Obama’s problem on Iraq isn’t that he is changing his position drastically, because he isn’t…

His problem is that his change in emphasis to flexibility from a
hard-nosed end-the-war stance — including his recent position that
withdrawing combat troops could take as long as 16 months — will now be
heard loud and clear by an anti-war camp that may have ignored it
before. So he could face a double-whammy in their feelings of betrayal
and other voters’ belief in the Republican charge that he is craven.

It was Obama’s messy series of comments Thursday, coming after weeks
in which Republicans had been goading him to change his withdrawal
policy in light of reduced violence, that put an unfortunate spotlight
on his quandary.

There’s the giveaway. This is “an unfortunate spotlight on his
quandary” for…whom? Obama, his campaign, his supporters and fans.
Including those in the media. That they see it as such is revealing of
how much trouble the senator is getting in for “tacking to the center”,
as one television news analyst put it.

So is he more centrist that we thought? Or is he becoming more
centrist than he was? Or….is this really a sincere and lasting “change
in emphasis”, as the AP calls it, as opposed to politically expedient
comments on the campaign trail? We don’t yet know.

On that remark about limits to health exceptions in partial birth abortion ‘rights’, Creative Minority Report is skeptical.