Mitt Romney, 2002: 'I'm not a partisan Republican ... my views are progressive'

Oh, the YouTube is not kind to Mitt Romney:

The video, posted on YouTube by Andy Kaczynski, comes from
an interview broadcast on New England Cable News during Romney's 2002 gubernatorial campaign.

I think the old standby definitions of who votes for which party have been blown away in this campaign. I think people recognize that I'm not a partisan Republican, that I'm someone who is moderate, and that my views are progressive.

Hey, cut him some slack, he was running for office, for Pete's sake—and he was doing it in Massachusetts, no less. How could he possibly have predicted teahadists would take over the GOP a decade later? And besides, did you hear him say he believed progressivism was a good model for the nation? No, neither did I. So he totally preserved his right to run as a conservative in 2012. Case closed.