They Call Him Flipper, Flipper...

Mitt Romney---the flip that keeps on flopping. Coming on the heels of his top adviser's "Etch-a-Sketch" remark yesterday, there was this report from NBC about a Santorum spokeswoman handing out Etch-A-Sketches at a Romney town hall meeting in Maryland. Apparently, this got under the Mittster's skin just a little bit:   

"A Rick Santorum spokeswoman was handing out Etch A Sketches before a Mitt Romney town hall Wednesday in Arbutus, Md., furthering the goading of the GOP front runner after a gaffe by his campaign earlier in the day. And it apparently worked. After the event, Romney shot back at reporters who quizzed him about it.

"I'm not doing a press conference right now, OK?" a testy Romney said, grabbing a reporter's tape recorder. He then hastily called a media avail and took one question."

 This morning Alec MacGillis at the New Republic had this about a Romney flip-flop on gasoline prices:

"As he campaigns for president, Mitt Romney is ratcheting up his attacks on Barack Obama over high gas prices, putting the issue at the center of his economic message. He is calling for Obama to fire his Energy secretary, EPA administrator, and Interior secretary, saying they are to blame for high prices at the pump. "No question in my mind that these--I call them the gas-hike trio--that those three are on a mission to drive up the price of gasoline and all energy so that they can finally get their solar and their wind to be more price-competitive. That's what they want to do," Romney said on Monday.

Curiously overlooked, though, is just what a shift this rhetoric is from the approach that Romney took on the issue of gas prices while governor of Massachusetts. Befitting his profile as a moderate Republican who cared about the environment, Governor Romney responded to price spikes by describing them as the natural result of global market pressures and by calling for increases in fuel efficiency--the same approach that he now derides Obama for taking as president."

Then Andrew Kaczynski at BuzzFeed found this video of Romney from 2002 where he says "I have a very different view than most Republicans" and "my agenda is different from traditional Republicans."