On Friday’s Starting Point, Soledad O’Brien asked Romney supporter Rep. Phil Gingrey whether the GOP candidate’s most recent comments regarding his remark about the “47 percent” of government-dependent Obama supporters constitute an outright lie. Romney, you see, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that his comment to fundraisers “didn’t come out right,” insisting that he will be a president for the “100 percent.”

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RELATED: Romney Appears On Hannity To Talk Post-Debate Reaction And The ’47 Percent’

Gingrey defended Romney, asserting that he is for every American and especially for the middle class, as the candidate himself has said several times.

“My point would be that’s completely contradictory to what he said the day after the original remark. which was basically ‘I meant what I said,” O’Brien replied. “‘This is a message i’m caring day in and day out and will carry over the coming months.’ So one of those has to be true. Either what he said on the

18th or what he said yesterday. Isn’t that the definition of a flip-flopper?”

“I think what he said yesterday, Soledad, was 100% true,” said Gingrey.

O’Brien then showed a clop of President Obama, post-debate, telling a crowd of supporters that “a different Mitt Romney showed up at the debate.” While she conceded that the President was attempting to spin his own lackluster debate performance, she asked whether he had a point regarding Romney “dancing around,” asking again whether this wasn’t an example of Romney “flip-flopping.”

“I have been watching and involved in presidential politics since 1960 when I first voted,” said Gingrey. “And the Republican, the conservative candidate, the primary, is always going to lean right and come back to the center for the general, the opposite for the Democrat. That’s all you are seeing here. It is very typical.”

But isn’t this, O’Brien asked, an example of an “Etch-a-Sketch moment”?

“Well, I think it was very important for Governor Romney to let the American people know that he has the capability of working across the aisle, working with the Democrats,” said Gingrey, going on to detail Romney’s hand in Massachusetts’ health care law.

“That’s not exactly my question,” O’Brien replied, “because my question is what

you said is during the campaign, you know, you lean to the right and then you come back to the center when you are actually in the general election. So, to me, that is you say one thing for a certain audience to get them to support you, and you then say something different, maybe completely contradictory, to another audience — which some could define as lying. So is that an Etch-a-sketch moment what we are seeing?”

“And some could refer to that as campaign tactics,” Gingrey responded. “Good campaign tactics without violating one’s principle.”

Have a look, via CNN:
Tags: debate, Etch A Sketch, lying, Mitt Romney, Phil Gingrey, Sean Hannity, Soledad O'Brien