This weekend, presidential candidate Newt Gingrich raised eyebrows when he became the first prominent Republican to trash talk the House GOP’s wildly unpopular plan to destroy Medicare, calling it “right-wing social engineering.” Gingrich didn’t earn points for consistency, seeing that he had previously expressed support for the plan, and has all along celebrated the plan to decimate Medicaid, a program that also helps millions of seniors pay for health care, but is less beloved of the GOP base. But at least this time he seemed to be taking a somewhat principled stand against his party’s war on the poor and the elderly.

But then he changed his mind. Again. The day after the news of Gingrich’s rant against the Paul Ryan budget broke, his spokeswoman started walking back his criticism and blaming the media for misinterpreting his comments. "There is little daylight between Ryan and Gingrich," she said.

Not that this double flip-flop comes as a surprise.

Recently, for instance, Gingrich did a similar transparent U-turn on the Libya intervention, and then denied that he had changed his mind. And these are only the latest examples.

In the Huffington Post on Friday, People For’s Michael Keegan looked back at Gingrich’s long history of “toxic McCarthyism, petty and unprincipled partisanship, and preening self-promotion. If Gingrich’s history is any guide, the only principle we can expect him to stick with is political expediency.