Wow,
I can just picture you at your keyboard twisting yourself into a pretzel to somehow make all of the Mittster’s flip-flops sound like principled choices on his part.
How do you do that?
I am sure that skill-set would be useful somewhere, however, I just can’t think of where right now.
When people switch to the conservative position, of course it’s principled, because we are right.
I realise that a person can switch to the RIGHT position for the wrong reasons. But since any logical argument provided explaining the new position will be correct (since the conservative position is right, the argument for it is sound), I see little reason to run around trying to dream up unprincipled reasons for the same action.