Greg Sargent's Plumline: The most consistent 2012 GOP hopeful thus far: Mitt Romney!

The most consistent 2012 GOP hopeful thus far: Mitt Romney!
By Greg Sargent

How did we get to the point where Mitt Romney — who in 2008 was the personification of ideological mallebility and opportunism — is actually turning out to be perhaps the most consistent of the 2012 GOP candidates?

Don’t laugh — it’s true.

Case in point: On Friday, Jon Huntsman, pressed to explain why he thought in 2009 that Obama’s stimulus was too small — a position that would be anathema to the right — insisted that he thought its tax cuts were too small. But now Steve Benen has turned up evidence that in fact Huntsman did say he thought more stimulus spending on the infrastructure was in order.

Indeed, Huntsman in 2009 also said flatly that the stimulus “probably wasn’t big enough.”

Okay, so we have Huntsman doing contortions on the stimulus. But he’s hardly the only 2012 GOP hopeful who is rapidly abandoning once-sensible positions in order to make himself acceptable to 2012 GOP primary voters. We have Newt Gingrich insisting up and down, against all evidence, that he never supported individual mandates, and he’s also twisting himself into knots over Ryancare. And we have Tim Pawlenty reversing himself and apologizing for his previous belief in the potential legitimacy of climate science.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-most-consistent-2012-gop-hopeful-thus-far-mitt-romney/2011/03/03/AF7Tvx9G_blog.html