Posted on 09/19/2007 1:35:25 PM PDT by Utah Girl
Mitt Romney walked onto the Olympic stage in 1999 a rich businessman still smarting from losing his first bid for public office. He walked off, three years later, a star-polished candidate who would be elected governor of Massachusetts in a matter of months. This was the place of his emergence and his transition.
In rescuing the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games, which had been tarnished by scandal, Mr. Romney learned the ways of Washington and the hurly-burly of politics, mastered the news media, built a staff of loyalists and made fund-raising connections in Utah that have proven vital to his presidential campaign.
“The Olympics gave him a public persona he didn’t have before,” said Robert H. Garff, a businessman who served as the chairman of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. “He grew into the person he is today.”
But the hardheaded and hard-nosed pragmatism that allowed Mr. Romney to juggle an unruly coalition of politicians, sponsors and volunteers as chief executive of the Games now haunts him on the campaign trail among some conservative Republicans. They complain that he has no core beliefs and shifts positions on a range of issues to placate various constituencies.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
During the Clinton years, they took credit for everything, including the sun rising every morning.
The SLC games were unbelievably well-run. I’ve gone to several Olympics, and he did a Class A job. And especially so soon after 9/11!
“They complain that he has no core beliefs and shifts positions on a range of issues to placate various constituencies.”
Truth hurts.
Odd that the New York Times picked this moment to run a puff piece on Romney. I think they favor him over the other candidates. Rudy is more liberal, but liberal New Yorkers hate him, so that leaves Romney as the best of the bunch.
Let me know when they run an article on Duncan Hunter.
I won’t vote for any gun grabbers such as Mitt or Rudy.
The firearms reform bill signed by Governor Romney in 2004 had the endorsement of the NRA (a MUST READ), Gun Owners' Action League, law enforcement and Massachusetts gun owners. The bill added several measures these groups favored, including a lengthening of the terms of firearm identification cards and licenses to carry, namely;
1) Extending the term of a firearm identification card and a license to carry firearms from four years to six years,
2) Granting a 90-day grace period for holders of firearm identification cards and licenses to carry who have applied for renewal, and
3) Creating a seven-member Firearm License Review Board to review firearm license applications that have been denied.
"This is truly a great day for Massachusetts' sportsmen and women. These reforms correct some serious mistakes that were made during the gun debate in 1998, when many of our state’s gun owners were stripped of their long-standing rights to own firearms." (MA State Senator Stephen M. Brewer (D), July 1, 2004)
"I want to congratulate everyone that has worked so hard on this issue. Because of their dedication, we are here today to sign into law this consensus piece of legislation. This change will go a long way toward fixing the flaws created by the 1998 law. Another key piece to this legislation addresses those citizens who have applied for renewals. If the government does not process their renewal in a timely fashion, those citizens won't be put at risk because of the 90 day grace period that is being adopted today." (MA State Representative George N. Peterson, Jr. (R), July 1, 2004)
"There are a lot of good things in the bill," said Jim Wallace, legislative director of the Gun Owners' Action League, the state's leading pro-gun group. "In all, the bill represents a healing process, or the beginning of the healing process, between lawful gun owners and the Massachusetts Legislature." (State moves on assault weapons ban, Boston Globe, June 24, 2004)
The firearms reform bill signed in 2004 prohibited the sale of the same weapons in Massachusetts banned in the 1998 legislation but loosened other restrictions imposed by the 1998 gun bill. Therefore, after Governor Romney signed the gun bill in 2004, gun owners in Massachusetts had fewer restrictions on gun ownership than at any time since 1998.
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