Several prominent conservative celebrities and pundits have been singing the praises of Mitt Romney, saying he is the true conservative in the race for the nomination and that he more than anyone else embodies the Reagan legacy. This chorus of pro-Romney voices is growing larger by the week, and was given a bump by Romney's win in Michigan. Well, with all due respect to these usually dependable conservative pundits and voices, they are absolutely 100% wrong. Mitt Romney's real record tells us many things, but being a conservative and the heir to Ronald Reagan's legacy are not among them.

Let's start by looking at Romney's much-trumpeted record as a businessman.

Mitt Romney's time in private industry was mostly spent in leveraged buyouts -- including using junk bonds to finance buyouts and hanging out with indicted junk bonds guru Michael Milken -- some of which put large numbers of people out of jobs and caused bankruptcies that left stock owners broke but made huge profits for Romney and his firm. Romney also sat on the board of one company that swindled the government out of millions of dollars (the company plead guilty to defrauding in the amount of $25 million), due to Romney's lax oversight. He later openly lied about the situation, trying to claim personal credit for starting an investigation into the situation and saying the problem was solved under his watch. The truth is that court documents show the defrauding continued under Romney's watch (and his firm tripled their investment in the company), and that someone else eventually halted the swindling. Romney personally made nearly half a million dollars out of the deal.

When the firm was in danger of going under, Romney was put in charge of saving it -- and this started his reputation as a turn-around man. Well, what exactly did he do? He made the founding partners give back $30 million they took from the employee-stock ownership plan and another $100 million in notes. Then he stopped paying bills, renegotiated debts, and got rid of a couple hundred employees. So, he took back money, stopped paying the bills, refinanced debt, and fired people. Well, that's not exactly some "out of left field" decision-making, folks.

How about the Olympics? Well, Romney pledged publicly not to take any "severance pay" for his work with the Olympics (and he himself notes this promise in his book Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games), and then went ahead and took a nearly half a million dollars severance payment anyway (in addition to his salary for the job). Then, apparently deciding he may as well see how much more he could squeeze out of the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee, he then lobbied the committee for 25 MORE such payments to his senior managers as well.

Oh, and the whole "scandal-plagued" Olympics situation Romney came in to clean up and turn around? Well, turns out Romney is close friends with -- and later took political donations from -- David E. Simmons, one of the two people blamed for the entire scandal in the first place.

Mitt Romney's track record as manager of a state holds even worse signs of how he would govern as president.

According to researchers at the Center for Market Studies at Northeastern University, Massachusetts was behind the rest of the country as a whole on "all key labor market measures", frequently at or near the bottom in fact.  Manufacturing payroll employment in Massachusetts was the third worst in the nation during Romney's term as Governor. The researches also stated, "Massachusetts was the only state to have failed to post any gain in its pool of employed residents," and was one of the two states that had no rise in resident labor force. Median real weekly  earnings fell by about 2 percent for full-time and salaried workers during Romney's term, and in 2005 median household income fell about 3 percent from its 2000 level. By 2005, Massachusetts had the fourth-highest median home prices in the nation. This combination of poor economic conditions resulted in (and then was further enhanced by) a large outmigration of people of working age, the second-highest rate in the nation when Hurricane Katrina's depopulation effect is excluded.

The Cato Institute noted that Romney "balanced the budget with some spending cuts, but a $500 million increase in various fees was the largest component of the budget fix."

Click here to see a chart comparing Massachusetts' economic stats under Romney, with the statistics for the rest of the nation.  It's not a pretty picture, and it does much to dispel some of the myths Romney and his new band of cheerleaders are trying to promote.

Now let's look at Romney's position on abortion, since he seems to be running away from his previous positions as fast as he can.

It was just three years ago that Mitt Romney endorsed former Planned Parenthood attorney Rocky Anderson, the Democratic mayor of Salt Lake City . But that's just in keeping with his long record of supporting abortion.

When he ran for the Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994, Romney said, "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. I have since the time that my mom took that position when she ran in 1970 as a US Senate candidate. I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years we should sustain and support it."  And he argued on camera during a debate in that election that he was more liberal than Kennedy!  Romney further explained during the debate, "[M]y mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter, and you will not see my wavering on that."

During his campaign for governor of Massachusetts, Romney was endorsed by the pro-abortion group Pro-Choice Coalition, and during a debate he got into an argument with his Democratic rival about which of them was the most pro-abortion.  His campaign Web site included the assertion: "The choice to have an abortion is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the government's."

Romney answered YES to all of these questions during the campaign, on a questionnaire from Planned Parenthood: "Do you support the substance of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade?"; "Do you support state funding of abortion services through Medicaid for low-income women?"; and "In 1998 the FDA approved the first packaging of emergency contraception, also known as the "morning after pill." Emergency contraception is a high dose combination of oral contraceptives that if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, can safely prevent a pregnancy from occurring. Do you support efforts to increase access to emergency contraception?"

Click here to see Romney defending abortion and stating his support for its legality.  And click here to see him explaining his pro-abortion position on camera yet again.  Then click here to see him saying he has no links to the pro-life movement.

And once governor, Romney signed into law a health care plan that did in fact provide tax-funded abortion (click here to see the actual document on the Web site for the state health care program, and look at the first list of benefits under "What benefits will I get?").  Incredibly, if you click here you will see that the law funding the plan states that Planned Parenthood is on the payment policy advisory board, but Romney never did anything to change this part of the law either (but you'll notice he did object to and change other parts of the law).

The truth is plain for anyone to see -- Mitt Romney has been a longtime supporter of abortion, and is now simply being dishonest about his past positions. There is little reason to believe that for the first 50+ years of his life he was outspokenly pro-abortion, and enacted policies as governor that advanced this pro-abortion position, but suddenly when he decided to run for president he at long last changed his views. And it is disingenuous at best for prominent conservatives to make excuses for Romney and his shameless dishonesty about his views on abortion.

Mitt Romney is not a true fiscal conservative, nor is he an honest businessman or someone who we should trust to handle our economy. He is also not conservative on social issues either, as his long and strong support for abortion should clearly demonstrate. That he attempts to cover up this embarrassing past is yet one more piece of evidence that he cannot be trusted, and does not deserve the support of conservative commentators or voters.