Romney is a religious zellot with ties to the very top of the Mormon Church. Him winning the presidency was supposed to fulfill some major religious prophecy for them. He's a conservative through and through, if anything it would be easier to change his outlook on issues of the economy than it would on many of these social issues.

It's really just that the ways in which he's a moderate have simply just flown out the window during the Trump years for the rest of the party. The previous analysis was to move away from chauvinistic rhetoric but the opposite happened.