For Romney, a course set long ago

But the younger Mr. Romney is also mounting his campaign from the opposite end of the party — courting Christian conservatives and anti-tax activists. His father was a hero to party liberals. Among his signature accomplishments were increasing public school budgets, and introducing a civil rights commission, income tax, and state minimum wage to Michigan. At the 1964 Republican convention, with Mitt watching, George Romney picked a fight with supporters of Senator Barry Goldwater by suggesting he planned a “racist campaign.” Four years later, he kicked off his own campaign with a tour of slums.

Some of George Romney’s former advisers said they were not sure he would even be a member of today’s more conservative Republican Party. Two argued that the father would not have changed positions on matters of principle, the way they believe his son has on abortion and other issues. (Opponents say Mr. Romney has shifted on gun control, gay rights and immigration as well).

“George would have made up his mind and his public positions much earlier, and stuck with it regardless of the political consequences,” said Richard L. Milliman, a former adviser.

Charles E. Harmon, another former adviser, agreed: “He was not a man who went from one thing to another. That is a difference, and it bothers me.”

Mitt Romney, though, said there was “no question” that his father would be a Republican today, one very much like his son. They shared the same commitment to faith and family, he said. Both saw inner city schools as “the civil rights problem of our time” and teachers unions as an impediment to solving it. And, he said, his father had also eventually concluded that government was “growing out of control.”

‘Concentrations of power’
On his 80th birthday, in 1987, George Romney took family members on a tour of Washington, instructing them in the three dangerous “concentrations of power:” “big labor,” “big business” and “big government.”

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Mitt Romney said he learned his political values from his father, pointing to the health insurance program he introduced in Massachusetts as something his pragmatic father would have favored. It provided private insurance for the poor by tapping taxpayer money set aside to cover their emergency room visits, winning bipartisan support.

“If you listen to what my opponents have to say — ‘Romney is just trying to move to the right to appeal to the right wing of the Republican Party’ — well, why is it that in the last months of my governorship that I helped push through a plan to help give health insurance to everybody in the state?” Mr. Romney said.

Expect more of the moderate side of Mitt Romney if he makes it to the general election, said Mr. Eyre, his friend and his father’s former aide. “I think you will say to yourself, ‘That looks a lot like George,’” Mr. Eyre said. “You are going to see a different part of Mitt than what we see now and, frankly, I think it will come to him more naturally.”

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