As Alana has observed, Newt Gingrich used to be a lot less timid about reforming American institutions that were considered third-rail type dangers for politicians. It’s hard to understand why anyone who shepherded a welfare reform act through Congress, as he did as speaker, even though that had been considered politically impossible for decades, would suddenly get gun shy bout Medicare.

But Newt’s flip-flopping isn’t merely conceptual. He was actually for Paul Ryan’s plan before he was against it. As Ed Morrissey noted at Hotair, two weeks ago Gingrich told Time that he would have voted for the Ryan budget if he were in Congress, calling it “a good first step.” Yesterday, he likened it to Obamacare and denounced it as a radical overreach. And he did so, without so much as an acknowledgment that this was change of heart on his part.

This is recurring pattern with Gingrich.

During the run-up to America’s intervention in the Libyan civil war, Gingrich urged President Obama to act to stop Qaddafi. As soon as the United States acted, Gingrich denounced the decision as unnecessary.

And, of course, there is the fact that Gingrich was once a vocal supporter of Al Gore’s global warming activism, even going so far as to make a commercial in favor of the cause with Nancy Pelosi. Nowadays, he is an active critic of alarmism over global warming.

Listening to him talk about Ryan, it’s not clear whom Gingrich thinks Republican primary voters really are or what constituency he is trying to appeal to. But his problem is bigger than that. His inability to adopt a consistent, principled position on a host of issues must lead Republicans, as Peter has pointed out, to raise questions about the former speaker’s character that have nothing to do with his past sexual transgressions.