Trust but Verify

Paul Rahe has a good take on how conservatives should view Mitt Romney in the coming election:

Mitt Romney is no more a socialist than [New York City Mayor Michael] Bloomberg. But he has never been a conservative, and in the past -- before he moved to the national stage -- he distanced himself as much as possible from conservatives and even from the Republican Party. In the 1990s, when he was the Republican nominee for the Senate in Massachusetts, he insisted that he was not the same kind of Republican as Ronald Reagan. A decade later, he insisted that he was "a progressive" in his views and that he should be thought of as "a reformer" and not as a Republican. His record in office as Governor of Massachusetts -- with regard to Romneycare and global warming, for example -- is consistent with this. He deserves our support in the upcoming election but he has not earned and should not be accorded our trust.

That having been said, I would not rule out the possibility that Romney will as President earn that trust. Circumstances -- and I have in mind the grave fiscal crisis threatening the administrative entitlements state -- may persuade him to rethink. He is a man of goodwill and evident integrity. Moreover, he knows a failing enterprise when he sees it; he recognizes the limits of the state's capacity to extract revenue from those who actually work; he has seen the threat that the administrative entitlements state poses to religious and political liberty. If he is in any way intellectually agile, he will by now have realized that the path he was on as Governor in Massachusetts is unsustainable and that, when pursued at the federal level,  it will concentrate power and influence in the hands of the federal government on a scale inconsistent with our retention of the liberties we have enjoyed for more than two hundred years.

Dr. Rahe may be right about this.  The latest example that comes to mind has to do with the current occupant of the White House.  While running for president in 2008, Obama chided President Bush for his supposed mangling of the Constitution when it came to the treatment of enemy combatants, Guantanamo Bay, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  But when he assumed office, Obama tacitly kept most of the policies enacted by the Bush Administration in tact.  That has to do with the prudence of the executive office and the knowledge that comes with that seat.  Maybe it will be the same for Romney.