Romney is not a conservative - that makes him a CINO. He acts very much like a country club Republican.
You are mistakenly confounding Romney, who in a normal time would be among the Establishment Donor class, with the machine guys.
Remember, the Republican Party has no counterpart to the various special interests that make up the Democratic party. There you can work your way through the chairs in your organization and that will translate into chair assignments within the party framework as well.
Which, BTW, is why the Democrats have no class of Country Clubbers.
This is something people who ustabe Democrats have to get usedta ~ Republican organizational structures are far different from those of the Democrats.
I think he’s actually worse than a country club Republican, if that’s possible.