No, he was a supporter of liberal Democrats before he ran for office and had to paddle vigorously to the right just to run as a GOP candidate in MA. Then, of course, as soon as he was in office he not only did absolutely nothing to support GOP candidates down-ticket from him—he governed as a liberal Democrat while in office.
He tried to enact a couple of rightish-leaning acts that never were even actually implemented before he stepped down in order to help him run as something of a Republican for president.
He was plotting to run for president back from when he first ran for office. He first ran against Teddy Kennedy in a race for which it wasn’t expected he’d win, only that he’d establish name recognition. But MA had a string of three Republicans governors before him, and not only did running against Kennedy give him a chance to have the support of his party, it enabled him to supposedly posture as a more credible eventual national candidate from MA. Then, he was able to run outwardly as a continuation of the string of GOP governors that went back to William Weld.
The dude was a liberal, soulless corpus of ambition through every step of his political (and business) career.
On the other side, he obviously has been a good and dedicated provider to his family and a model citizen within his Mormon community, within which he has done a number of good acts.
You are reminding me in a quite cogent manner of why I had such misgivings about Romney in 2012. Who do you want in 2016? Or at least see as credible conservative candidates?