The lowlight from this afternoon’s presser, which brought the expected hosannas to bipartisanship and boo-hooing over the failure of the DREAM Act. To clue you in on what he means by “evolving,” recall that this is a guy who declared himself in favor of gay marriage allllll the way back in 1996. Then he developed national political ambitions and, as if by magic, suddenly “devolved” (to borrow his rhetorical conceit) to the view that civil unions for gays were as much as he could bear. Now, with rumbling among his base about a primary challenge in 2012, he’s “evolving” again. I’d call him a B.S. artist but his pandering is so clumsy and transparently insincere that it can’t qualify as “art.” Let’s call him a B.S. finger-painter instead.

He gave this same answer, more or less, in an interview the other day with the Advocate. Here’s how the exchange with their reporter ended:

Can you imagine a time when you would get there? I mean, you say “evolving,” and that sort of assumes that you get somewhere. Can you imagine a time of getting there?

I’m going to stick with my answer. [Laughter]

The real answer is “the day after Election Day 2012,” but like I say, he’s finger-painting here. If you’re still not convinced that he’s lying about his true position — although I doubt there’s a man or woman anywhere on the political spectrum who isn’t — contrast his halting, politic answer to Tapper in the first clip below with his effusive praise for gay troops in the second. Night and day.

Exit question: Just wondering — are there any other issues, social or otherwise, on which Spock’s views are still “evolving” or does this happen to be the only one? I’m sure he’d say yes if that question was put to him, as any intellectual worth his salt will insist that he continues to question his own assumptions, but I don’t get much of an assumption-questioning vibe from him about abortion, say, or Keynesianism. Just how broad is this political “evolution” anyway?