Who knew Newts could flip and flop like that?

Presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich has tried this week to explain away his contrasting statements on numerous subjects. His explanations are authoritative, assured, and unconvincing.

Gingrich says President Obama’s individual health insurance mandate is terrible, even unconstitutional. But in 1993 he was in favor of an individual mandate. That’s not inconsistent, he says, because back then he was opposed to Hillary Clinton’s health care plan, and this time he’s opposed to Obama’s.

“That was a clip from 1993, when in fact the conservative position was to have individual insurance in opposition to Hillarycare because she wanted to have everybody have government care,” Gingrich said on “On The Record with Greta Van Susteren” this week. “Let’s get that out of the way, OK?”

But it wasn’t THE conservative position. It was a positionof some conservatives, which was opposed by many other conservatives.

“I do not support a mandate,” Gingrich told Van Susteren. OK, but why? Does Gingrich think a mandate is unconstitutional? If so, how did he come to that conclusion? He was a professor of American history before 1993, so it would be strange if the question of constitutionality had never ocurred to him before then.

Gingrich, it must be said, is not always opposed to Democratic ideas. He joined Nancy Pelosi in supporting cap-and-trade. On Sunday he joined Democrats in attacking Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan. Now, though, he’s changed his views on both.

Republican primary voters must be asking themselves the same question they asked about Mitt Romney in 2008: Is this change we can believe in?