The Return of Conservatives Who Lie

This is sort of comforting, in an odd sort of way. From Newt Gingrich, when asked if there's anything he wouldn't do to be President:

“Sure, there are lots of things that I wouldn’t do. I wouldn’t lie to the American people. I wouldn’t switch my positions for political reasons. It’s perfectly reasonable to change your position if facts change, if you see new things you didn’t see in the past. Everybody’s done that — Ronald Reagan did it.

“It’s wrong to go around and adopt radically different positions based on your need of any one election. Because then people have to ask themselves, ‘What will you tell me next time?’

He is, of course, lying. His various policy shifts from, say, 2007 to the present day on issues like a health-care mandate or a cap-and-trade scheme to address global warming has absolutely zero to do with seeing new things he didn't see in the past. Both were mainstream, conservative, market-based approaches to pressing national or global problems four years ago. Then Obama won an election, and tried to pass them both through Congress (batting 1-for-2), and now they're both evil socialism!!! So naturally Newt is now against them. That's the exact same move Romney pulled on those issues, and which Gingrich is attacking him for. So what's comforting about this? That he feels the need to lie. The words I quoted above could've been spoken by any liberal: we're all about changing our opinions when the facts change, and in fact frequently use that justification for apparent 'flip-flops' that conservatives try to accuse us of. Now we, admittedly, do a reasonably good job of living up to that ideal, or at least of trying to, something one cannot say of Newt. But at least he feels he needs to pay lip-service to the good, liberal ideal here. It's sort of like the kind of nostalgia one might have over 'compassionate conservativism': not that there actually was anything compassionate about George W. Bush's platform, but he felt he needed to say there was. Today, most Republican candidates go around trying to reassure voters that there isn't a tiny little speck of compassion in their policy positions. That's another area where Gingrich feels the need to lie, referring to his immigration policy (of allowing local citizen-boards to deport illegals on the basis of personal whimsical dislike, which is probably unconstitutional) as 'humane.' It isn't. But it's kind of nice he thinks that a humane immigration policy is still a good thing.