Romney pitches conservative credentials to CPAC

Mitt Romney earned polite applause with his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) but none of the passion Rick Santorum inspired earlier Friday.

He tried to sell his conservative credentials to the GOP base, which has shown skepticism about Romney’s record and expressed concern about his tenure as Massachusetts governor.

But the crowd seemed less than thrilled, especially when considering the multiple standing ovations the audience gave to Santorum, whose fiery remarks were red meat for the activists.

{mosads}The presidential candidate made his pitch anyways. “I know conservatism because I have lived conservatism. I did some of the very things conservatism is designed for,” he added. “I started new businesses and turned around broken ones, and I’m not ashamed to say I was successful in doing it.”

The line drew the only sustained standing ovation of his speech.

Romney, in his remarks, fought against the perception that he was a moderate governor and noted he “fought against long odds in a deep blue state but I was a severely conservative Republican governor.”

In a week that featured both gay marriage and contraception in the headlines, Romney sought to reassure the conservative audience that he agrees with them on social issues.

He promised to push for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. He said that as governor he’d fought hard to repeal the state’s gay marriage law and successfully “prevented Massachusetts from becoming the Las Vegas of gay marriage” by limiting the unions to Massachusetts residents. 

He also said he’d fought to allow the Catholic Church “to serve the community in ways that were consistent with their conscience” through adoption programs.

He also touted his record in the private sector and joked that while he served in government, “I didn’t inhale,” earning laughs from the crowd.

While the conservative activists who made up the crowd cheered at some of his attacks, they seemed more polite than enthusiastic about the GOP front-runner, who slipped with losses in three primary contests on Tuesday.

But Romney drew strong interest on Friday — like for Santorum’s speech, the auditorium was packed and hourlong lines to get in snaked through the hotel lobby.

American Conservative Union President Al Cardenas, the head of CPAC, flagged some of Romney’s problems in his introduction.

“I’ve heard concerns expressed about Gov. Romney changing his views over time, and I checked, as I’m sure most of you have,” he said. “In each instance the evolution has been toward a more conservative view evidenced by more than a decade of leadership and executive action.”

The line received weak applause and drew attention to one of the concerns Romney faces from the base.

Cardenas worked for Romney in 2008 and told The Hill after the speech that he “care[s] for him a lot” but has not endorsed a candidate because of his current job.

Romney’s campaign had suggested in recent days that his CPAC speech would be a departure from his standard stump speech, but there was little new in what he said Friday afternoon.

He reprised a point often made that he is the only candidate who hasn’t served in Washington and took a veiled shot at Santorum, who his campaign has attacked for supporting earmarks.

“Any politician that tries to tell you that they hated Washington so much they just couldn’t leave, that’s the politician that’ll try to sell you the bridge to nowhere,” he said to applause.

Other attacks focused on President Obama drew strong applause: His calls to eliminate ObamaCare, defund Planned Parenthood and cut government workers’ pay all brought the audience to their feet. 

While he has been delivering those lines on the campaign trail for months to strong applause, he’s still been unable to consistently win over conservative voters in primary contests.

CPAC, which is filled with conservative activists and few of the establishment Republicans Romney thrives with, was always going to be a tough stage for the former governor.

He has long struggled at the event: Romney’s best-received speech at CPAC in the past was the one in which he announced he was dropping out of the presidential race in 2008. At that time he was the conservative alternative to John McCain and the crowd expressed their displeasure at his announcement.