Mitt Romney, though, said there was “no question” that his father would be a Republican today, one very much like his son. They shared the same commitment to faith and family, he said. Both saw inner city schools as “the civil rights problem of our time” and teachers unions as an impediment to solving it. And, he said, his father had also eventually concluded that government was “growing out of control.”

On his 80th birthday, in 1987, George Romney took family members on a tour of Washington, instructing them in the three dangerous “concentrations of power:” “big labor,” “big business” and “big government.”

Mitt Romney said he learned his political values from his father, pointing to the health insurance program he introduced in Massachusetts as something his pragmatic father would have favored. It provided private insurance for the poor by tapping taxpayer money set aside to cover their emergency room visits, winning bipartisan support.

John McIntyre, RCP on why Huckabee might be helping Romney.

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