Karl Rove lauds Obama's organization in his WSJ column this morning, but concludes with a warning:

Instead of consistency, Mr. Obama has followed Richard Nixon's advice, to cater to his party's extreme in the primaries and then move aggressively to the middle for the fall. [snip]

By taking Nixon's advice, Mr. Obama is assuming such dramatic reversals will somehow avoid voter scrutiny. But people are watching closely, and by setting a world indoor record for jettisoning past positions, Mr. Obama may be risking his reputation for truthfulness. A candidate's credibility, once lost, is very hard to restore, regardless of how fine an organization he has built.

Yet in the Los Angeles Times, Michael Finnegan and Mark Z. Barabak report that aside from some noisy rumblings in the blogosphere, Obama appears to not be paying much of a price for his political shape shifting thus far, which culminated with his vote yesterday in favor of the surveillance bill granting immunity to telecoms:

The vote, a reversal of an earlier pledge, was Obama's latest perceived step away from his party's base on a range of issues, among them the death penalty, gun control and taxpayer money for religious groups.

Reaction has been swift and -- aside from the blogosphere and some newspaper columnists -- notably mild.

"We're willing to work through this period," said Richard Parker, president of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, one of the party's most enduring advocacy groups. In the long run, he said, the organization's "serious concerns" about Obama are far outweighed by its disagreements with Republican John McCain.

Gerald Austin, a veteran Democratic strategist, put it more succinctly: "When I hear people complaining . . . I tell them I have one thing to say: 'President John McCain. Three Supreme Court appointments.' That's all I need to say."

Though Rove suggests the pace at which Obama is moving to the center is problematic, I think it's probably a wise move. Instead of dragging out a host of position changes in dribs and drabs over the summer, he's performing the political equivalent of tearing off a band aid - and, per Finnegan and Barabak, he appears to be largely getting away with it.

Certainly, the saturation media coverage and level of engagement this year is generating an above average level of scrutiny for Obama's push to the middle - though many would still argue he's not getting nearly the scrutiny he deserves - but the speed at which the campaign moves is working in Obama's favor (see the Feiler Faster Thesis) . By the time Election Day rolls around, it'll feel like he's held his new, improved centrist positions forever.