Mitt Romney’s biggest problem this time isn’t that he’s a RINO. It’s that he’s not a big enough Republican in Name Only for the party fat cats and the mainstream media.

As for Jeb Bush, though — nobody is ever going to out-RINO Jeb Bush again.

This headline on the front page of The New York Times says it all about this RINO’s RINO.

“For Jeb Bush, Evolving Views Over 2 Decades.”

Ah, the e-word. The careful reader is thus alerted to the fact that he is about to dive into some heavy-duty revisionist history. Is the word “whitewash” still permissible in polite company?

On the issues, Jeb Bush has been spinning like a weather vane in a hurricane. But this is how one Jeb pom-pom boy in Florida quoted in the article describes his hero’s leftward lurch:

“There is an evolution in temperament and an evolution in judgment and an evolution in wisdom — and there is an evolution in his respect for others’ point of view.”

Remember when Mitt Romney changed his position on abortion? No evolution there — he was flip-flopping like a gaffed marlin. Only conservatives flip-flop. The Times wants to make sure we understand the distinction, quoting another of Jeb’s Sunshine State acolytes:

“Mr. Bush ‘does not flip-flop. … He learns. When he learns, he changes.’”

What Jeb changes from is his previous “head-banging … tear-it-down conservatism.”

Of course, a RINO simultaneously has to assure the tear-it-down headbangers that he really hasn’t “grown,” to use another one of the moonbat code words. Take gay marriage. Now Jeb Bush uses “sympathetic, accepting language.”

In other words, as befitting his exalted RINO status, Jeb gets to have it both ways. On the one hand this, on the other hand that. There’s a weasel word for this, too — nuanced.

As we rejoin the story, his hagiographers are whispering reverently about Jeb’s “more nuanced approach, one influenced, colleagues said, by his immersion in the multiculturalism of Florida and his adoption of the Catholic faith.”

Multiculturalism of course can never ever be a bad thing, the occasional genocidal massacre notwithstanding. But when it comes to “Catholic faith” — the Times and their Kool-Aid-guzzling readers are more conflicted. When Catholic bishops denounce abortion or gay marriage — that’s not very nuanced, is it? On the other hand, when the pope goes ragtime on “global warming” — the pontiff is the spiritual leader of the world, is he not?

As we leave Jeb, the recovering Republican Protestant is continuing his “long walk away from such harshness.” This long walk will continue until the summer of 2016, when the fight comes down to just two, Jeb vs. Hillary, or the fake Indian.

Then, Jeb, stand by for a barrage. Ask John McCain when the wheels came off the Straight Talk Express. As soon as it was one-on-one. To paraphrase Harry S. Truman, if you give the people a choice between a Democrat and a Democrat, they’ll pick the Democrat every time.

Listen to Howie every weekday on WMEX AM 1510 from 3 to 7 p.m.