I agree completely with Ezra: don’t count on it. In fact, he’ll have far less room to maneuver since a lot of GOP activists intensely dislike him, and he won’t be able to tell them to take a hike in the way that, say, Rick Perry would be able to, which is to say without jeopardizing his relationship with the base and his presidency. But there’s still a reason to prefer Romney over the other Repubs as a liberal: he does actually have a decent mind that he prefers to use. Whereas Perry and Bachmann do not seem to, and the others that do are longshots like Gary Johnson and Jon Huntsman. But liberals who make the case that Romney would be about equivalent to Obama in the White House (a case that I have actually heard from some liberals, and that Bill Simmon aptly refutes here) are letting their disappointment overwhelm their critical faculties. Romney as president will make liberals pine for the days of George W. Bush, according to his own rhetoric. I see no reason to see why that wouldn’t be the case.