Mitt Romney was the establishment GOP candidate this year, so he won the nomination, like every establishment GOP presidential candidate in memory.
But back in 2008, he was running against John McCain, the establishment candidate.
So Romney ran to the right, seeking the support of Republican conservatives who have lately been branded as the tea party.
Though Romney now tries to somewhat slide to the center, flip-flopping for the umpteenth time, his record of pandering to the far-right endures.
Like in this National Review article, entitled "Romney's radical roots," and subtitled "No moderate."
Details, below.
NR's Jeff Hemingway writes that Romney expressed support for the theories of Mormon/Bircher wingnut Cleon Skousen while campaigning on an Iowa talk radio show in 2007:
Romney’s argument with the Iowa talk-radio host starts with the two discussing their shared affinity for W. Cleon Skousen.
“You and I share a common affection for the late Cleon Skousen,” the radio host says.
The former governor agrees, affirming Skousen was his professor and when the radio host professes his fondness for Skousen’s book The Making of America, while he acknowledges he hasn’t read it, Mitt quickly says, “That’s worth reading.”
Wingnut radio host is fond of far-right book he hasn't read, and Romney dittoheads.
Hemingway quickly moves on to explain why Skousen (and presumably Skousen-recommending Romney) is to the right of the National Review:
Skousen was by turns an FBI employee, the police chief of Salt Lake City, a Brigham Young University professor, consigliore to former secretary of agriculture and Mormon president Ezra Taft Benson and, well, all-around nutjob.
Of course he was also a prolific writer and likely brilliant, but Skousen is not an association a presidential candidate should loudly trumpet.
snip
Skousen’s Communist paranoia may have reached its apotheosis in 1970 when the Mormon church and BYU in particular began receiving a tremendous amount of external pressure to change the church’s policy on denying the Mormon priesthood to blacks.
Skousen, then a professor at BYU, published an article entitled “The Communist Attack on the Mormons” and noted that critics were employing Communist tactics which were “distorting the religious tenet of the Church regarding the Negro and blowing it up to ridiculous proportions.”
snip
Romney’s familiarity with Cleon Skousen does convincingly demonstrate that Mitt Romney is not far removed and indeed well-acquainted with a radical and firebrand conservatism.
When Romney attended BYU, after his draft-avoiding Mormon mission in France, he took at least one course from this Bircher/racist wingnut.
And, as a presidential candidate, he then spoke positively about Glenn Beck's favorite pseudo-historian.
IMHO, that's more of an issue this year than what Romney did as a prep school bully.