flip-flop-flip

[Victor Steinbok]

Although I know this has been used in the past, the advance of Mitt
Romney's presidential campaign has been particularly fertile ground for
commentators using the expression flip-flop-flip both as a noun and as a
verb (especially in past tense) to signify changing the position not
once, but multiple times, especially to return to the original position
from which one has previously flipped to "the other side".

Here's just the latest example:

http://goo.gl/4EWlq
> In New Hampshire Wednesday, Romney told a crowd that he’s a fan of
> both sides of his home state’s biggest college rivalry. But six months
> ago, when he was speaking to a crowd at the University Of Michigan, he
> came down firmly as a Wolverine.
> Back in 2007, when campaigning at a game between Michigan and Michigan
> State, Romney declined to choose between the two.
> So it seems that Romney has not just flip-flopped, but
> flip-flop-flipped, going from fan of both, to Wolverine, to fan of
> both again.

As a consequence, the meaning of "flip-flop" has been narrowed to just a
single "flip"--now that you have a separate term for multiple flips, why
use one to cover all of them?

VS-)

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org