Rachel Maddow opened her show tonight noticing an interesting phenomenon in Republican politics: party leaders making surprisingly moderate and candid comments during interviews, only to walk back those comments later after remembering what it is they actually support. Maddow showed how this phenomenon runs the gamut from members of Congress to governors to even the man the GOP put up as its presidential candidate last year.

Two of these big post-interview shifts happened in the past 24 hours. The more notable one was House Speaker John Boehner telling Jake Tapper on CNN earlier today that he agrees with universal background checks on firearms. Or not. Because following the interview, Tapper clarified that when he followed up with Boehner’s office, they said he does not support background checks. What’s going on here?

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The other big flip-flop today was Ohio governor John Kasich, who in spite of saying the actual phrase “if you want to have a civil union, that’s fine with me” in an interview, his office had to clarify following the interview that he really doesn’t. Maddow surmised that he wasn’t lying, but that he just legitimately “forgot that he doesn’t actually believe that.”

Maddow then took viewers on a trip down memory lane to bring up how this used to be a recurring problem with Mitt Romney, especially on abortion and contraception. She also brought up how Senator Rand Paul is facing a potential double-flip of his own, because despite pushing a bill which would “ban all abortions in America,” he walked back from the very idea and even said there are “thousands of exceptions” in an interview.

Maddow exasperatedly asked, “Why does this happen so much in Republican politics? And how does the other party, or the country at large, argue policy with a party that so often does not even seem to know what their policy positions are, let alone actually believe in them?”

Watch the video below, courtesy of MSNBC:



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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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