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Romney has changed his position on a LOT of fundamental issues, usually carefully timed with his running for a new election.

Yes, he's incredibly flippant like that, with discontinuous breaks from one stance to the next and little to no explanation on his part for the change. And always suspiciously coincidental with his arrival as a competitor in a different political environment.

Health care and climate change were not easy issues where there was a fundamental conservative or Judeo-Christian basis for how to approach them going years back. Newt is a thinker, and a lot of his writings on these issues over the years while he’s been out of office don’t appear to present solid positions, but moreso thinking out loud and considering various potential solutions. Also keep in mind he worked for think tanks. His job was to pontificate on these things and try to come up with solutions.

Right. Which is why I'm not taken aback when Newt has a different position now towards dealing with an issue compared to what he did 5-6+ years ago. Because there's a demonstrable evolution in his thoughts about it. He can explain to you why he priorly considered approach X to be viable, how he later came to realize that approach X was flawed, and why he's rationally convinced now that approach Y is a better means to the same end.

Another key distinction to be mindful of between the two is that, unlike Romney, Newt doesn't flip-flop on his stated beliefs and end-goals. He only varies on the means and methods he conceives as offering the best pathway to getting there.

There are bigger differences between Romney and Newt on their current campaign proposals, not just their past statements. Newt is offering a much broader tax overhaul while Romney’s takes the same tax-the-rich-more approach that Obama does.

Agreed. A Romney term would just be yet another 4 years of churning the status quo.