Mitt Romney rejected the notion that he became any more conservative as a result of the contentious, long GOP primary.
“The idea that somehow . . . the primary made me become more conservative than I was just isn’t accurate,” Romney said on Fox News Sunday. Instead, the “long and blistering primary” led to a series of attacks that he believed created an “unfavorable impression” of him.
Romney also criticized the debates, saying that sometimes there were “questions that are kind of silly, that end up hurting you in the general” election. He specifically highlighted the instance when GOP candidates were asked if they would accept a deal that had a 10:1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases.
While he dismissed the notion of such a deal as a “fairy tale,” Romney nonetheless said he felt he couldn’t say he would agree to such a deal. If he had done so, he argued, he would have been accused of reversing his pledge to not raise taxes. “Then they’d say, ‘Romney’s changed his position,’ he said he wouldn’t raise his taxes and now he’s saying he will,” Romney said.