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.