Romney Reassured NARAL that His Rise Would Be Good for Them

This sort of thing is why it’s difficult to trust anything that Mitt Romney says about his own beliefs.

Mitt Romneywas firm and direct with the abortion rights advocates sitting in his office nine years ago, assuring the group that if elected Massachusetts governor, he would protect the state’s abortion laws.Then, as the meeting drew to a close, the businessman offered an intriguing suggestion — that he would rise to national prominence in the Republican Party as a victor in a liberal state and could use his influence to soften the GOP’s hard-line opposition to abortion.

He would be a “good voice in the party” for their cause, and his moderation on the issue would be “widely written about,” he said, according to detailed notes taken by an officer of the group, NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts.

“You need someone like me in Washington,” several participants recalled Romney saying that day in September 2002, an apparent reference to his future ambitions.

Romney made similar assurances to activists for gay rights and the environment, according to people familiar with the discussions, both as a candidate for governor and then in the early days of his term.

The encounters with liberal advocates offer some revealing insights into the ever-evolving ideology of Romney, who as a presidential candidate now espouses the hard-line opposition to abortion that he seemed to disparage less than a decade ago.

That’s because Mitt Romney is an extremely well-oiled weathervane. After watching him in public life for about five years, I have no idea what he actually believes.

Clearly, the first thing we need to determine is who leaked this! I’ll take a guess — it was Santorum, in the boardroom, with a laptop.

Just kidding. NARAL spilled the beans, probably because they feel betrayed by Romney’s current stance and they had detailed notes about the meeting to juice the story up. Conservatives may have reason to feel the same sense of betrayal, eventually. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney could have been a Scott Walker. He chose to be a William Weld instead.