Evolved, indeed. During his Massachusetts races, Romney paraded his conviction that "abortion should be safe and legal in this country" and promised that "you will not see me wavering" on Roe vs. Wade.

Now Romney says he opposes abortion except in cases of rape and incest or to save the life of the mother, and supports overturning Roe. At the National Review Institute Conservative Summit last month — at the very hotel where he had told us of his commitment to not altering state law one way or another — Romney boasted that each time an issue involving reproductive rights came up during his governorship, "on every single one of them I came down on the side of respecting human life."

Romney's "Extreme Makeover: Political Edition" goes beyond abortion rights. Once he supported allowing gays to serve openly in the military and backed a federal law to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation — not anymore. He's gone from saying "I don't line up with the NRA" to becoming, last August, a life member.

Romney told the Boston Globe in 1994 that, as a registered independent, he voted in the 1992 Democratic primary for Paul Tsongas because Tsongas was from Massachusetts and he favored Tsongas' ideas over Bill Clinton's. Appearing last weekend on ABC's "This Week," Romney offered a contradictory explanation: "When there was no real contest in the Republican primary, I'd vote in the Democrat primary, vote for the person who I thought would be the weakest opponent for a Republican."

Surely a man with a Harvard MBA could do better than that. At the time of the primary, Tsongas was doing better than Clinton in matchups against George H.W. Bush. And Tsongas didn't need Romney's help trouncing Clinton in his home state.

To give this explanation the credit it doesn't deserve, Romney's rationale boils down to arguing that he didn't really mean his vote; he was just trying to game the political process. Those considering Romney in 2008 have reason to wonder what a politician who admits so freely to that kind of manipulation is willing to do to win their votes.

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Ruth Marcus is a member of The Washington Post's editorial page staff.