Flip-Flopping... To The Extreme!!11!!

Are there any deeply-held beliefs and principles of the top three GOP front-runners(*) that they won't throw out the window to suck up to their base?

Mitt Romney takes the cake here (former Lincoln Chafee-ish Republican turned proud George W. Bush-wannabe), Rudy Guiliani is following close behind ('Pro-choice? Did I say pro-choice? I'm sorry, I meant 9/11'), and now John McCain, whose campaign is running on steam at this point, is trying to catch up.

Sen. McCain, former champion of fair immigration reform, now says "¡No más!"-

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain on Thursday backed a scaled-down proposal that imposes strict rules to end illegal immigration but doesn't include a path to citizenship.

The move away from a comprehensive measure is an about-face for the Arizona senator, who had been a leading GOP champion of a bill that included a guest worker program and would have legalized many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. It failed earlier this year...

...McCain's immigration position has been a campaign liability among Republican voters and hurt his efforts to raise money...

But, of course, come general election time, they'll all be recanting this insanity and shuffling back to what passes for the center these days. They're just great leaders that way.

[* Note: I'm not counting Fred Thompson (or "Fred!" as the far-right lovingly calls him), because a) he's not even officially running yet, and b) I am not aware of any principles or beliefs he ever had to betray.]