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The Washington, D.C. conservative weekly Human Events included Romney in its Top Ten list of RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), ranking him at number 8 in the nation with the following entry:

"Has said, 'I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country." Supports (homosexual) civil unions and stringent gun laws. After visiting Houston, he criticized the city's aesthetics, saying, "This is what happens when you don't have zoning.'"

Romney should have ranked even higher on the list of RINOs. He famously likes to tell conservative audiences in Iowa and South Carolina that being a conservative Republican in Massachusetts is like being a cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention.

I attended last fall's GOP conference in Michigan, where Romney continued his masquerade as a "conservative," even daring to tell the assembled activists: "I am pro-life" -- knowing full well that he does not mean by that term what those listening would think he meant.

Romney's ten-year political career has occurred from his late 40s to his late 50s, yet he asks conservatives to naively believe that he's just now in the "formative" years when he's still figuring out his core beliefs.

During that decade, he has insistently supported legal abortion-on-demand: "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. I have since the time when my Mom took that position when she ran in 1970 as a U.S. Senate candidate. I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years that we should sustain and support it, and I sustain and support that law and the right of a woman to make that choice."

Not surprisingly, this clear pro-abortion position earned him the endorsement of the pro-abortion Republican Majority for Choice PAC.

He was also endorsed by the homosexual "Log Cabin Republicans," twice.

He believes the Boy Scouts should allow openly homosexual Scoutmasters: "I feel that all people should be allowed to participate in the Boy Scouts regardless of their sexual orientation."

He endorsed Ted Kennedy's federal "gay rights" legislation. He endorses taxpayer-financed same-sex benefits for the homosexual partners of state employees, even attacking some Democratic legislators for not supporting such benefits.

According to the Associated Press, he has appointed at least two openly homosexual lawyers to state judgeships, one a board member of the Lesbian & Gay Bar Association. Imagine how that will fly in Republican presidential primaries in the South, the prospect of a president with a record of appointing homosexual activists to the court.

In 2002, he denounced a proposed state Marriage Protection Amendment prohibiting homosexual marriage, civil unions, or same-sex public employee benefits as "too extreme," after being advised by the media that his own wife and son had just signed a petition to place it on the ballot.

These days, Romney travels to Iowa and Michigan and South Carolina to claim he's "pro-life" and brag about fighting homosexual marriage, saying that at age 58, his position on such issues has suddenly "evolved."

It's my experience that pro-family voters reject the theory of evolution. Especially when the evolution is conveniently timed to produce political benefit.

Social conservatives won't vote against Romney because of his faith. Social conservatives -- including, and perhaps especially, his fellow Mormons -- will vote against him because of his pro-abortion, pro-homosexual record.

Gov. Romney can tell all the cattle-rancher-at-a-vegetarian-convention jokes he wants about Massachusetts. But they're going to fall flat when social conservatives learn -- and they will -- that his record on abortion and homosexual activists' political agenda is that of Vegetarian in Chief.