Largely in response to a set of comments in this post, I provide the following from Sunday’s MTP (Russert is addressig Senator Clinton, btw):

MR. RUSSERT: There’s a lot of discussion about John Kerry and flip-flops. Rudy Giuliani in August said this about Senator Kerry on Iraq: “I don’t know what [Kerry's] position is on Iraq. Of course, it changes all the time. There hasn’t been a consistent position. He voted for the war. Then he voted against funding the war. Then he said that he voted both for the funding and against the funding. So there have been so many different positions. Honestly, again, I mean this in the most respectful way. I don’t know Senator Kerry’s current position on Iraq.”

And what he’s pointing to, Senator, is you both voted for authority for the president to go to war, but you voted for the $87 million to support the troops. Senator Kerry voted against it. Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat, said this: “The truth is, [Kerry] usually spends more time talking about the politics of a vote … and that was certainly the case on the $87 billion.” And then this: “As one of [Kerry's] advisers put it … `Off the record, he [voted against the $87 billion] because of Howard Dean. On the record, he has an elaborate explanation.’”

And then Biden again: “Biden himself ultimately voted for the [$87 billion], and he confirmed that Kerry’s decision not to was `tactical,’ and attempt `to prove to Dean’s guys I’m not a warmonger.’”

In short: I am far from the only one who sees politics in Kerry’s vote on this issue. To pretend like the $87 billion vote and the whole voting for one version and then voting against the final version was some principled stance is to allow partisan filters to overcome the obvious.