Romney turning his back on those who elected him

Once upon a time, Mitt Romney was one of us.

No, really. Once, he spent days in a hearing room insisting that he was a proud resident of Massachusetts, that Utah was a mere detour, that his heart lay in the Bay State.

He even shot a commercial. Romney, in shirt sleeves, touted his 30 years as a resident of Belmont. He spoke of raising his children there, of how he had lived there since 1971. That last statement was always subject to interpretation, given his years in Salt Lake City running the 2002 Winter Olympics, but it made the point.

The occasion for those declarations of fealty was the challenge to Romney's residency launched by the Massachusetts Democratic Party in 2002. But that was three long years ago, a political eternity. Now he seems like a man who can't shed blue-state, pro-choice, gay- marrying Massachusetts fast enough.

Earlier this week, the governor announced that he had vetoed an emergency contraception bill. No surprise there: He was always certain to reject it, and the idea that Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey might sign it into law in his absence was never anything but a joke.

But Romney didn't stop there. He simultaneously wrote an op-ed article in the Globe in which he renounced Roe v. Wade in general, arguing that such matters should be left to the states. (I have to say, it was a well-crafted column.) His views on abortion, we are told, have "evolved." He now believes states should settle this matter for themselves. Let Louisiana be Louisiana.

Then again, maybe he's just an opportunist. As one prominent Republican said of his sudden devotion to states' rights, "That was music to segregationists' ears."

Of course, this is all geared to Romney's nascent presidential campaign. He isn't the first governor to develop wanderlust; in recent years it's practically become part of the job description. Bill Weld wanted to go to the Senate, though he was more than willing to settle for Mexico. Paul Cellucci exiled himself to Ottawa.

Still, neither Weld nor Cellucci ever separated himself from Massachusetts the way Romney is in the process of doing.

Many make the case that people don't change their minds about big questions such as abortion or capital punishment. Some would say that holds even more so among people in politics who are forced as a matter of professional survival to figure out what they believe on such questions. I don't think anything is true of everybody, but it's a persuasive argument.

That, however, is exactly what Romney has done. In both his 1994 U.S. Senate race and his run for governor, he presented himself as a supporter of abortion rights. He went so far as to claim it as homage to his mother, who, he said, had been a supporter of abortion rights when she ran for U.S. Senate in 1970. He was a supporter of settled law. Now, he'd like to tear the whole thing down and start over.

He hasn't merely changed his mind. He has done so in a public way certain to outrage a big chunk of the state's residents, only 12 percent of whom are registered Republicans. Massachusetts, with its liberal Democrats and liberal-leaning independents, now occupies a completely different place in his political thinking. He could have vetoed the bill and left it at that; the decision to go much further was obviously a strategic one, one that says Massachusetts is no longer what he's about.

The governor can certainly change his mind about Roe v. Wade if he wants. But the charge that he has waffled on abortion in both of his campaigns rings truer than ever this week. Still, if it plays in South Carolina and Louisiana, who cares what they say in Boston?

In all likelihood, Romney won't be the only 2008 presidential candidate to experience an election-related epiphany. But he can claim one odd distinction: He may be the first Massachusetts governor ever to view the people who elected him as a straitjacket he can't wait to escape.

Adrian Walker can be reached at [email protected].

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