Where I live (rural Tennessee) he was definitely considered a moderate. I can't tell you how many times I heard him called the lesser of two evils during the run-up to the presidential election. There were a lot of people here who voted for him even though they didn't really like him. Southern Baptists are not big fans of Mormons, tbh.

Romney was the least wacky of the conservative candidates, but he certainly wasn't moderate judging by his stated views, particularly when he was caught making those comments about poor people; nothing moderate about those views! Let's not forget that these same red neck conservatives constantly denounce and deride Obama and the Clintons as being "socialist" or "far left" when that is blatantly untrue; they are dyed-in-the-wool centrists, and are most definitely right-of-center and fully in cahoots with the right-of-center business agenda of the Democratic Leadership Council, who are full of "blue dog" (read: right-of-center) democrats. The term "centrist" is a euphemism for that, what Bill Clinton called a "conservative liberal."

They are simply perceived as "far left" and "socialist" by the conservatives, particularly those of the rural mindset, because they aren't right-of-center enough for them, and belong to the "wrong" political party whom the conservatives identify with the liberal agenda... while ignoring the fact that the mainstream liberal agenda of today is most definitely not what it was during the 1970s, and is very pro-status quo. The fact that most modern conservatives claim otherwise show that their indoctrinated view doesn't cohere with reality. There are still a sizable number of liberals and progressives who stand largely behind the policies that most mainstream liberals advocated in the late '60s and '70s (Michael Moore among them), at least to the extent that they are genuinely left-of-center (though rarely radically so these days), but their problem IMO is that they refuse to give up the Democratic Party as lost, and still can't quite give up the "go for the lesser evil" mentality. Their British counterparts do the same regarding the Labour Party.