Mitt Romney told the Des Moines Register today that “abortion legislation isn’t part of his agenda”.

At the same time, as Evan McMorris-Santoro of TPM points out:

Romney has tried to distance himself from the Republican platform’s strict limits on abortion and uncomfortable questions about conservatives and abortion rights raised in the wake of Todd Akin’s “legitmate rape” fiasco. At the same time, he’s promised to use to use the power of the executive order to deny federal funding to global family planning groups that work with abortion services. He’s also said he wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned.

Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, was a co-sponsor of the 2011 House bill that sought to impose new restrictions on federal funding for abortion, limiting coverage to victims of “forcible rape.”

Now get this, in an update…

Planned Parenthood’s political arm called Romney’s abortion comments “misleading.”

Really?

Josh Marshall, also of TPM, points out a huge disconnect among conservatives about this:

The Romney campaign is figuring that conservatives are so pumped by his Lazarus-like rise from the dead and beating down of Barack Obama that they’ll basically cut him whatever slack he needs or wants.

Expressions of strength and power are galvanizing. We should also remembering how the fantasy of the general election debate Obama beat down was a constantly harped on theme during the Republican primaries. Not so much who could win but who could deliver the sort of cathartic crushing blow that would finally expose the presidential phony Obama for good.

So in other words, even though conservatives believe running a RINO like John McCain, and the RINO-like policies of George W. Bush were two things that got us a Marxist Fascist Maoist Kenyan Nazi Black Separatist white people hater etc etc etc in the first place, even if the guy who put Obama in his place is himself a RINO, that’s fine by them. As long as the job got done.

Now holding your nose and voting for the lesser of two evils is as American as apple pie, but considering the dread on the right earlier this year that someone other than a true conservative would get the nomination and thus get us four more years of said scary black guy, this goes way beyond the pale, and shows just how deranged and cynical conservatives really are.