Say it isn't so, Ezra Klein.

Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, in a column on political flip-flopping, notes,

[Politicians are] trying to win elections, not points for intellectual consistency.

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Flips and flops like these make the labels “left” and “right” meaningless as a descriptor of anything save partisanship over any extended period of time.

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Parties — particularly when they’re in the minority — care more about power than policy.

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But the voters who trust the parties don’t know that, and they tend to take on faith the idea that their representatives are fighting for some relatively consistent agenda. They’re wrong.

Gosh oh golly, who'd ha' thunk it? When I was a College Republican, I attended a CR conference at which Maryland's leading Republican politician flatly stated that Republican politicians didn't believe their own talking points about smaller government; that was just something to tell the unwashed masses. Team Blue was no better; Baltimore City Democrats and Montgomery County Democrats took just about opposite positions on economic development and job creation. Since then, politicians like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have often come across as satires of the opposite party's dream candidate.