Don’t post arguments against me behind my back, and Romney has never been a conservative, he is, and always has been a hard liberal.
Romney was the FOURTH republican governor in a row, in a state that prefers republican governors.
Romney has been a political animal all of his life, starting as a republican intern in his early teens, attending the 1964 convention, being an activist in college, participating in campaigns including Governor and Presidential and Senate, for his parents, and political interviews all of his life (including the 1960s, and 1970s), leaving the republican party because of Reagan in 1979, donating to widely scattered campaigns during the 1980s and 1990s, becoming a supporter of democrats and a democrat fund raiser and voter, and running for office for the last 20 years while spending about 55 million of his own funds and breaking spending records in multiple campaigns.
Even Ann has run for political office. Mitt Romney was weaned on politics and has been involved with them all of his life.
Everything that we know about the man, supports the fact of him leaving the republican party because of Reagan and conservatism in 1979, and not returning until that era was over, and Clinton was in the white house.
Romney calls himself a William Weld republican and was anti-Reagan, anti-Jesse Helms, anti-Contract with America, anti-life, anti-gun, anti-straight Boy Scouts, anti-straight military, and just radically leftist.
Romney chose to run in Massachusetts instead of Utah because it was a good political match for him, he didn’t do very well and could not run for reelection, and he slinked out of town (literally, he has moved to California), with a 34% approval rating.
He then spent his way into becoming an embarrassment as a presidential candidate, with seemingly no personal politics, unless of course, one looked at his actual life, and ignored his campaign of lies.
I pointed out already that your "source" didn't understand Massachusetts election law. He didn't make an informed and logical conclusion from what the registrar or town clerk said, but jumped to an invalid conclusion. You yourself didn't -- and apparently still don't -- have a clue about the political situation in Massachusetts in the 1980s. Massachusetts didn't "prefer Republican governors" until William Weld came along in 1990, and today it looks like the state no longer does. But you ignore all that and simply repeat the same nonsense.
Two more points. First, you can't assume that people from political families will have a life-long interest in politics. Maybe they like the excitement of conventions and travel, but don't want all the hassles. Maybe they enjoy the life but want to prove that they can make it on their own in another field. But even if Romney had a longtime interest in politics, it doesn't translate into a lifelong ideological commitment. You've assumed that, but haven't been able to prove it.
What we know doesn't prove or "demonstrate" that Romney "left" the Republican party for ideological reasons in 1979. So far as I can tell, you are the only person making that claim. The date doesn't really make much sense. Romney didn't have a crystal ball that would tell him that Reagan would win the primaries and the general election. Was he really that much in favor of Carter or Kennedy that he couldn't stomach Bush or Baker or Dole or Connolly or Anderson?
Second, just as you're projecting the political climate in Massachusetts in the 1990s back on the 1980s, you're projecting current conditions in the GOP back on the 1980s. Eastern Establishment Republicans -- if that's what Romney was -- weren't as angry at or opposed to Reagan in the 1980s as they were at later Republicans (or at Goldwater earlier).
There was a lot of support in the Northeast for Reagan in the 1980 and 1984 general elections. That didn't all come from conservatives or Reagan Democrats. It also came from moderate Republicans (maybe even some liberal Republicans). Disenchantment with Carter (and Mondale) was that strong. Disenchantment with conservative Republicans came later. So you can't just assume that Romney would have been so outraged by Reagan's policies that he turned Democrat.
A BYU and HBS/HLS grad working in management consulting in the 1980s might have felt comfortable in Bill Clinton's Democratic Party. It's less likely he would have enjoyed Jimmy Carter's or Walter Mondale's. He might have found more company among co-workers and associates in Ronald Reagan's and George H.W. Bush's Republican Party (if not in Reagan's conservative movement) than with Carter or Mondale, even in Massachusetts. Ten or twenty years later, the situation would have been very different.
Your theory or story might be true. But it might not. I don't know. I'm not in Romney's head. But you present your theory as though it's a proved fact or a well-grounded conclusion based on the available facts. It isn't. It looks a lot like you're projecting qualities on to Romney that you want him to have. You want him to be a sworn enemy, so you just assume he is. That his outlook on life and his life-choices may not have followed your scheme doesn't seem to occur to you.
You're not entirely wrong: Romney has taken a variety of positions, they've changed over the years. You see that he hasn't been a movement or Reagan conservative. Where you err is in assuming that he's been firmly on the other, liberal side of the debate, rather than see that he hasn't been steadfastly on either side of the political argument his whole life long. Other people do understand that and have tried to come to terms with it, whether they supported Romney or not.
I don't have any interest in pursuing this further. You're just repeating what you've already said in a simplistic cut-and-paste way, and I notice from the responses that you've gotten that a lot of people see through your routines pretty easily.