Right giving Romney a pass on his reinvention as a moderate

In an endorsement interview Tuesday, Mitt Romney told the Des Moines Register:

“There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.”

The statement immediately raised eyebrows, as it came from a candidate who said he would be “delighted” to sign a bill banning all abortions, “absolutely” would support a personhood amendment, said he would appoint Justices willing to overturn Roe v. Wade and who selected as his running mate an individual who’s personally cosponsored some of the most extreme anti-choice legislation?

But guess who’s not freaking out? The pro-life right.

Today, Ralph Reed reassures supporters that Romney is with them on the abortion issue, explaining that his answer was only about legislation, not executive orders or judicial appointments. And the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins let Romney’s comments that he didn’t have pro-life agenda totally slide, saying: “No alarm bells here.”

Perkins let on that the Romney campaign called to give him a heads-up immediately after the newspaper published his comments. We suspect that a number of these heads-up phone calls are happening, as Romney runs away from an array of policies favored by the right wing of his party, namely:

• his debate claim he won’t cut education, despite proposing a budget that reduces all non-military and entitlement spending by 40%
• his newfound embrace of aspects of Obamacare, including pre-existing conditions, something that can only be accomplished by keeping the individual mandate
• his debate assurances that he has no intentions of lowering the tax rates on the wealthy despite, you know, promising to

Based on how fast he’s running to the middle, we’re assuming his campaign must be making a lot of phone calls asking allies to hold their fire while he pretends to abandon their positions to get elected.