Republicans face a precarious contradiction. To win in the primaries, they must be extreme in their views to the point of insaniTEA. However, such extremes turn off swing voters, so to win the general election, they must be much more moderate. As a result, they frequently claim both sides of many issues. What makes it interesting is how irate they become when someone has the nerve to quote what they had said in other venues. Some even seem to think that anyone who quotes them is lying.

With each step in this campaign, repeat GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney walks further away from the principles he once held. Quickly joining climate change , immigration , and health care in the grave on his progressive principles is his pro-choice stance. When he first campaigned for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Romney promised to “preserve and protect ” a woman’s right to choose. That position quickly melted away under the heat of right-wing scrutiny and now, in seeking to garner the religious right vote, Romney is trying to re-brand himself as an anti-choice candidate. Of course, when a right-wing principle is so new, it’s hard to remember where the right-wing actually stands. Today at a town hall meeting at the University of New Hampshire in Manchester, NH, ThinkProgress’s Brad Johnson asked Romney whether, given his anti-abortion stance, there should be criminal sanctions on doctors or women if abortion should become illegal. Romney shut down the question as irrelevant, stating “I don’t think any political person has talked about criminal sanctions”: TP: I know that you believe we should repeal Roe vs. Wade and I was wondering if abortion becomes illegal in some states, should there be criminal sanctions against doctors who still perform abortions or for women who get abortions? ROMNEY:I don’t think anyone’s proposed that, have they? I don’t think any political person has talked about criminal sanctions. I think the right thing for matters relating to abortion is very similar to what I described in other measures which is return this to states. Let the states make their own choice. I’m pro-life and I think this is best handled — like many other things — at the state level… …It should come as no surprise that Romney seems to have forgotten he himself talked about this issue prior to his first presidential run. “In the case of a doctor, the kinds of penalties would be potentially losing a license or having some other kind of restriction. In the case of partial birth abortion, as I recall, the penalty is a possible prison term not to exceed two years,” he said in 2007… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

This article came with a video, but the sound track was flawed, so I found another that proves the point.

Rachel Maddow shows how Mitt is far from alone in his hypocrisy and interviews pollster Jeff Liszt.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Can you believe that? Newt actually said, “ Any ad that quotes what I said is a falsehood.”

We need to be alert to these self contradictions and prepared to explain them to others, to expose Republican politicians for their lies. And who can forget…