Mitt Romney and Flip Flopping (updated)

So Mitt Romney has worked on his answer to the criticim of being a flip-flopper.  Here's something from a recent debate:

Again, it was Harwood who got to the heart of the matter, pivoting from a question about Romney’s seemingly shifting views on an auto industry bailout to a query about whether he lacked a core.
It has been a charge that has dogged him since Romney abandoned his 1994 and 2002 support for abortion rights, his 2003 backing for a regional greenhouse gas pact, and the endorsement of gay rights he expressed during his 1994 Senate campaign and 2002 candidacy for Massachusetts governor.
Romney replied this time: “I have been married to the same woman for 25 - excuse me, I will get in trouble - for 42 years. I have been in the same church my entire life. I worked at one company, Bain, for 25 years. And I left that to go off and help save the Olympic Games.”
Finding his sealegs, he continued, “I think it is outrageous the Obama campaign continues to push this idea, when you have in the Obama administration the most political presidency we have seen in modern history. They are actually deciding when to pull out of Afghanistan based on politics.”
Then, Romney added a red-white-and-blue coda: “Let me tell you this, if I’m president of the United States, I will be true to my family, to my faith, and to our country, and I will never apologize for the United States of America. That’s my belief.”

So that's his explanation for his changed positions on so many key issues over his political career, and it seems that many in the media have lapped it up.  I heard commentators on Morning Joe praising this answer to the skies.

I can't understand what people are talking about.  Noboby's ever questioned Romney's faithfulness to his wife or to the Mormon Church.  It's a totally separate question.  I don't doubt that he has a personal "core". I doubt that he has a political one.  Think about this laundry list:

• He was pro-choice when he was governor of Massachusetts.  Now he's radically pro-life
• He passed universal health care with a personal mandate in Massachusetts.  Now he claims the very similar Affordable Care Act is an assault on liberty
• He believed in Climate Change, along with the scientific consensus, but now is a total denialist
• He supported cap and trade, a market-based solution to pollution controls (along with John McCain), until he decided it was an assault on business
• He's been all over the place on the Auto Bailout, supporting it before it happened, and now criticizing it because Obama took the advice.

I go back again to the amazing conservative media machine's ability to tar any non-conservative with any criticism through constant repetition.  They decided to make John Kerry a "flip flopper", in spite of the fact that he's been a consistent moderate liberal his whole career.  And now comes Romney, with 180 degree turns in policy constantly- I wonder if this issue will gain any traction during the general election.

As I've said before, the moderate "Wall Street Journal Conservatives" I know are ready to vote for Romney, believing that he's just lying about his extreme Tea Party positions to get the nomination.  They assure me that he'll pivot to sanity in time for the general election and as president.  Of course that same belief is held by Tea Party types, who don't want to vote for him for the same reason.  But the moderates ready to vote for him need to remember that he'll be working on re-election once he's elected, and it sure looks like the path to re-election for Republicans is to govern hard right.  It worked for Bush II, and Reagan, and the moderate path failed for Bush I. 

One thing I know is in Romney's "core"- winning.

UPDATE: Here's another great post from TNR on Romney's meta-flip flopping.

Somewhat lost amid the tizzy over Rick Perry's “oops” moment this week was that the former Massachusetts governor flip-flopped on whether or not he flip-flops. Observe Romney justify his many shifting views to a New Hampshire town hall audience in late September:

“In the private sector, if you don’t change your view when the facts change, well, you’ll get fired for being stubborn and stupid,” Romney said. “Winston Churchill said, ‘When the facts change, I change too, Madam.’”

The Churchill quotation, as many noted gleefully, is in fact properly attributed to John Maynard Keynes. But that doesn’t matter anymore, because since then Romney has changed his mind. He’s actually not a flip-flopper! During Wednesday night’s GOP candidate debate, when confronted with accusations of flip-floppery, Romney readily counted himself among the stubborn and stupid: “I think people understand that I’m a man of steadiness and constancy.”
Someone call Jorge Luis Borges, because Mitt’s flips and flops are getting downright meta.