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Well, and you wouldn’t know it if the anti-Romney bunch here had their way.

To call it “socialized medicine” is completely dishonest.

As to abortion, I was litigating an abortion case against the ACLU when Romney was running in Massachusetts, so I was paying attention, and I didn’t like what he said, at all. That’s why I didn’t become a supporter during the primaries until it was clear he was the best one left standing.

I know that, in his ecclesiastical positions, Romney counseled against abortion, and he got slammed by the Democrats for it. I am sure that, like me, he believes abortion is immoral and wrong. I knew that, running in Massachusetts, he would have to take the position that he would do nothing about their abortion laws. It was the practical thing to do because federal law preempts most attempts to tighten restrictions. And, in Massachusetts, with a heavily Democrat legislature, no pro-life legislation, even around the margins, had a chance. You have to pick your battles, and this was one where there was absolutely no chance of making any headway.

But, I thought he went way too far in pledging to keep a “woman’s right to choose” the way it was, and I was very turned off.

I think his current position is probably much more in line with his own views on the matter, and in line with what he has taught his children. Regardless, it is a blot.

But, taking everything into account, he is brilliant, a leader, a firm believer in freedom and America, and, in his personal life, has shown impeccable character. That counts for a lot with me.

I don’t think his 2002 position was based on a political calculation. I believe he actually supported abortion in 2002. He might have been “personally opposed” to the choice, but it is clear to me that he felt women had a RIGHT to abort, and therefore must have believed that abortion wasn’t really murder.

Romney didn’t come around to rejection of abortion as choice until at least 2005, which menas he is a very recent convert. As such, his conversion is suspect, and even as a Mitt supporter I would have preferred a candidate with a long history of being pro-life.

I understood why some people simply decided not to trust Romney — and I never argued that point, only that if you did trust that Romney had changed, his current positions were quite good from a conservative perspective.

Today of course we have Romneycare, and there’s no dismissing that as some old discarded position since Romney makes the mistake of defending it.

But it is telling that most of the attacks on Romney are for things he did years ago and that he has publicly repudiated. I understand not believing his repudiation, but I argue with those who IGNORE the repudiation and assert as FACT that Romney today is identical to the Romney of 2002, or 1994.