So here’s where we are with this tool. We already knew that he’d flip-flopped about repealing the law — initially he said he agreed with Rubio that it should be scrapped, then turned around last month and said he didn’t — but now he’s going to go the rest of the nine yards and claim that he would have voted for it straightaway. A stroll down memory lane with Hotline:

“I think what we need to do is go ahead and repeal this thing,” said Crist, while on “Fox News Sunday” on March 28. “Let’s start over. Let’s take an opportunity to do what’s right for the people.”

After switching parties, Crist softened his rhetoric on the issue. In a July 14 interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said the law “should be modified,” and didn’t support repealing it.

He then issued a “fact check” on his website on July 29, after people were understandably confused about where he stood on the issue.

“The Obama health care bill was too big, too expensive, and expanded the role of government far too much,” Crist wrote. “Had I been in the United States Senate at the time, I would have voted against the bill because of unacceptable provisions like the cuts to the Medicare Advantage program.”

As you’ll see, he does qualify what he says about voting for the bill by emphasizing that there are parts he wants to see changed. But even that’s pure expediency, of course: For one thing, he’s stressing Medicare here because he’s nakedly pandering for senior votes in Florida (not the first time he’s pandered on entitlements for the elderly, either), and for another, he knows that even by his usual standards his opportunistic positioning on this issue is a cynical disgrace. So much so, in fact, that just in the past hour or two he’s flipped back the other way and issued a statement claiming he “misspoke” in the interview and that he would indeed have voted against the bill. Except, of course, he didn’t misspeak: It’s painfully obvious in the clip that he knows exactly what he’s saying to the interviewer, but he probably forgot while he was saying it that he already had a bunch of statements critical of O-Care on the record. When he was reminded afterwards, he must have realized that a full reversal on this one would be a bridge too far even for him. No wonder his approval rating’s now underwater. What a worm. Click the image to watch.