Romney’s Moderate Republican Roots

Presidential hopeful and Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney lately has been backing away from earlier, moderate-sounding views on abortion and gay rights, but he can’t deny his impeccable moderate Republican pedigree.

Writing in the Decline and Fall of Liberal Republicans, published in 1989, Nicol E. Rae, a scholar of Republicanism, described Romney’s late father George as a serious 1968 presidential contender and a popular “pragmatic reformer in the progressive tradition.”

Elected 1962 as the first Republican governor of Michigan in more than 14 years, George Romney advocated a “citizens party” vision for the GOP — one that sounded too much like Eisenhower Republicanism to suit many conservative party stalwarts.

At the highly contentious 1964 GOP Convention, Romney also further alienated himself from the Goldwater wing by joining other liberal Republicans — Jacob Javitts, William Scranton and Nelson Rockefeller — in calling for platform amendments on civil rights, nuclear weaponry and party extremism, Rae states in his book.

Romney’s star eventually waned as his public statements sounded less and less like those of a serious presidential contender. The death knell was sounded after his notorious brainwashing statements following a Vietnam tour.