Amnesia is the order of the day in this election. In fact, Romney is the original candidate from amnesia. It's in his job description - he see his job as pleasing the audience he's speaking to at that moment and always retains the right to re-trade any position. Because of the votes he now needs, he's currently headed generally back to the 19th century by way of Herbert Hoover/Andrew Mellon, Harding and Coolidge. But essentially, he'a an investment banker/PE guy. They do business any way they can - that's what they do, that's what they've always done and that's what we should always expect them to do. That is why god (aided by FDR, who was aided by Pecora, Morganthau, Kennedy and others) invented regulation of financial markets. These guys will do business - it's our (the country at large's) job to see that they don't do harm. Romney gets away with continuous and continually changing misrepresentations, diversions, omissions, oversimplifications, blunders and lies, because he's not filing S-1s, he's running for president in a time of amnesia - it's always amnesia time in IB/PE land, except when it's usefully to choose something - always isolated and out of context - as binding precedent or must-avoid. After awhile (and it's already happened in the financial community big time) that very movement - or, as we say in finance, volatility - around various issues is actually seen to be a strength, e.g.. "this guy can bob and weave pretty darn well."  We (meaning they) don't want anyone with fixed principles - those can really get in the way when you are trying any and every way possible to make life easier for their private sectors business backers. It could be convenient to be a liberal sometimes - it was in MA. You never know when the wind will blow hard enough so that you actually have to raise taxes or close a loophole. Tacking to go up wind is expected, and only the rubes believe Romney actually believes what he's saying at any one moment. And only suckers and liberal Democrats believe that the election should be decided by the consistency, coherence or even morality of the candidates positions. We're talking about something much more important here - the power to affect how people make money and/or pay taxes.