During last night's presidential debate, Sarah Silverman tweeted, "Mitt Romney is one of the most progressive thinkers of 1950[.]" Sadly, that's too damn generous. Even in 1950, Mitt Romney would still be one of the least progressive thinkers of his time.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, took office in 1952. He expanded social security, launched the interstate highway system, sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce the desegregation of schools, and twice signed civil rights legislation designed to protect the right to vote. Hard to imagine the Mitt Romney of the Republican primary season endorsing any of that.
Step back a few more years, and Mitt still wouldn't be one of the most progressive thinkers of his time. In fact, his policies are akin to those of Calvin Coolidge, Laissez-faire Republican President of the United States between 1923 and 1929. Like Romney, Coolidge thought that taxes should be lower, and that the government should spend less in order to retire some of the national debt. And just like the Republican Congress of today, the Republican Congress of 1924 agreed. As a result, by 1927 taxes were lowered to the point where only the top 2% of income earners paid any income tax at all, and the government spent practically nothing.
And just like Romney believes today, in the 1920s Coolidge believed that the absence of government regulation, except for increased tariffs, was key to economic growth. He carried about this belief by appointing commissioners to the Federal Trade Commission and the Interstate Commerce Commission who did little to restrict the activities of businesses. The regulatory state under Coolidge was, as one biographer described it, "thin to the point of invisibility." None of this was progressive, even in the 1920s.
But to be fair, in 1929 the stock market crashed and the United States entered the Great Depression. So, in one sense it could be said that Mitt Romney would have been one of the most progressive thinkers in the 1920s - so long as you mean progress toward the Great Depression.