I would say, that in America at least, flip-flopping is only viewed as an insult by conservatives though. People criticized Biden over his busing policies during the election, but nobody critized the fact that he changed his mind on the topic, people discussed how he "grew". I know there are extremist pockets on both sides of the aisle - but I don't think the majority of liberals would really prefer a gotcha "I told you so" moment over actually getting meaningful policies done.

I've always viewed it more as an unfortunate coincidence[1] that social conservatism was so closely tied to climate change denial. In theory those folks wanting to make sure their children can hunt and hike like they did growing up should be strongly set in favour of preserving an environment where that remains a possibility. Instead we have the media pushing this shallow form of conservatism where we specifically want to preserve the unsustainable post-war boom years where every river had a paper mill on it, every driveway had two cars (except they didn't and they weren't SUVs) and nobody realized what the consequences of that were.

How do you overcome conservative media when it's pushing such a strong agenda? Inviting them over for tea isn't going to cause a sea-change.

1. Sorta - I think some folks worked hard to make sure this happened.