Back When Mitt Romney was Smart

Before he started running for President by pretending to the be the most severely conservative man in America, Mitt Romney had a lot of good ideas. Here Matt Yglesias catches him as governor of Massachusetts advocating what in Maryland is called "smart growth," promoting affordable housing by bribing older cities and suburbs to allow more development:

The number one culprit our employers mention [for not expanding in Massachusetts], the biggest obstacle to job growth, is the high cost of housing. Families can’t afford to locate here. There’s one simple reason our housing is so expensive: we don’t build enough of it. Yes, we’re doing better. In three years, housing starts have gone from 17,500 to 24,000, and multi-family starts have doubled. But we have to do better. Housing developers want to build and bankers are anxious to finance, but local citizens and municipalities fight housing development every way they can, primarily with lawsuits and lengthy delays. Some fear that new housing means new costs, such as for education, that the municipality can’t afford. For that reason, my budget will propose a new formula for funding schools that gives extra support to those that are growing. It also creates a new $30 million fund to reward those municipalities that are opening their doors to new housing, particularly in town and city centers. If we’re going to grow and attract new jobs, we have to build homes for people to live in.

Once upon a time, Romney was a results-oriented guy with a lot of interesting proposals. And then something happened.