Newt Gingrich's flip-flops

If there’s a classic in the genre of political flip-floppery, it must be Sen. John Kerry’s infamous statement in 2003: “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”

He was referring to a supplemental funding bill for the war in Iraq.

In the world of legislative sausage-making – and given what’s now known about how the US got into this prolonged and very costly conflict – what Sen. Kerry had done might seem logical. He was maneuvering to cut the Bush tax cuts in order to pay for the war.

But Kerry acknowledged that what he’d said had been "one of those inarticulate moments." To say the least, it did not help him a year later when he unsuccessfully ran against Bush in the presidential election.

Flip-flopping is an old charge in the rough-and-tumble world of politics. The New York Times archives include 251 specific uses of the phrase going back to 1851 and the days of Tammany Hall.

Today, Mitt Romney is trying mightily not to appear to be a flip-flopper on health care –not an easy task since the statewide plan he favored as governor of Massachusetts (including the dreaded individual mandate) is generally described as the model for the “Obamacare” he and his fellow Republicans now excoriate.

Romney may be among the strongest of the likely candidates for next year’s GOP presidential primaries. So you can be sure that his fellow Republicans will go after him on health care flip-flopping in their debates. Some already are.

Which brings us to another Republican with presidential ambitions but a recent spate of flip-flopping: Newt Gingrich.

On March 7, he was asked by Greta Van Susteren of Fox News what he would do about Muammar Qaddafi attacking his opponents in Libya.

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