One of the lead stories of Fox News’ “Fox Nation” website this morning is a “Romney Flashback.” It highlights this video from Mitt Romney’s successful gubernatorial campaign in 2002.
For those who can’t watch videos online, the key quote from Romney comes towards the end: “I think the old, standby definitions of who votes for which party have been blown away in this campaign. I think people recognize that I’m not a partisan Republican, that I’m someone who is moderate. My views are progressive….”
Now, I suspect Romney and his supporters would respond to this by insisting that Romney has since gone through a couple of radical transformations — shedding his policy agenda and his entire worldview — and that the presidential candidate of 2011 bears no resemblance to the gubernatorial candidate of 2002.
I’m not sure how that would make anyone feel more comfortable about Romney’s consistency or reliability, but that’s for Republican primary voters to decide.
That said, we talked recently about why the flip-flopper label has stuck to Romney and not Newt Gingrich, despite the fact that the latter has reversed course on nearly as many issues as the former. The answer probably has something to do with the fact that there are no videos of Gingrich boasting, “My views are progressive.”
