"The trajectory of the party"

The convention was, of course, not ­really anything like a Nazi rally, but the comparison suggests something about how essential the moderates believed their fight to be. It was obvious to them—in some cases for the last time in their political careers—exactly who was right and who was wrong. “With such extremists rising to official positions of leadership in the Republican party, we cannot recapture the respect of the nation and lead it to its necessary spiritual … and political rebirth,” Romney said. He walked out of his own party’s convention, taking with him De Vries and his 17-year-old son Mitt, and became, in that moment, a candidate for president in 1968. He also became an idea of himself—the tragic, alienated moderate Republican, a character he would spend nearly a decade performing, until, in 1972, he resigned from the Nixon administration and more or less retired from public life. 

NY Magazine: George Romney for President, 1968, May 20, 2012