Posted on 04/05/2007 5:34:12 AM PDT by areafiftyone
BOSTON Apr 5, 2007 (AP) In boasting about his lifelong experience as a hunter, Mitt Romney may have shot himself in the foot.
The Republican presidential contender has told audiences on several occasions, most recently this week in gun-savvy and early voting New Hampshire, that he has been a longtime hunter. But it turns out he has been on only two hunting trips.
Critics said it was the latest example of a White House aspirant willing to say anything to reach the Oval Office.
"Whether he's pretending to be a hunter, misleading people about loaning his campaign millions of dollars or signing a no-new-tax pledge he once mocked to hide his tax-raising record, he'll say absolutely anything to distance himself from his real record," said Damien LaVera, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.
The charge echoed with similarities to the criticism the Republican National Committee used to level against another Massachusetts politician running for president, Sen. John Kerry, who was his party's 2004 nominee.
In a question-and-answer session Tuesday in Keene, N.H., Romney spoke of his experience with hunting in a manner that suggested a close affiliation with the sport.
"I purchased a gun when I was a young man. I've been a hunter pretty much all my life," he told a man sporting a National Rifle Association cap.
Yet the former Massachusetts governor's hunting experience came during two trips at the bookends of his 60 years: as a 15-year-old, when he hunted rabbits with his cousins on a ranch in Idaho, and last year, when he shot quail on a fenced game preserve in Georgia.
The 2006 trip was an outing with major donors to the Republican Governors Association, which Romney headed at the time.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
for who? Rudy? Rudy doesn’t care about that. There are more important things to worry about and issues. If he was he would be trying to woo NRA people with lies and he tells it like it is. His record is his record. He’s not trying to change it.
He IS making fool's promises about judges and so forth that are in direct contradiction to his philosophy and history.
The point is that Romney is doing his best to demonstrate that he is pro second amendment and anti-gun grabber. Those who would challenge his bona fides look like idiots when they whine, "but he's only gone hunting twice! Waaaa!!" If they have a point to make, they should get off the stick and make it: show where or how Romney has demonstrated anti-second-amendment or pro-gun-grabbing beliefs. This whole thing is sickening, another case of morons giving Republicans a bad name by attacking their own for a "SO WHAT??" item.
“Kerry actually had better hunting creds and he actually owned guns.”
Kerry only claimed to own a shotgun and a non-firing, bolt action war souvenir.
My question was, that if you are a shooting sports fan billionaire, with multiple estates around the nation, wouldn’t you own an arsenal of pistols, rifles, and shotguns, for yourself and guests at a couple of the estates?
You mean like Romney does?
Hunter, conservative....
Anyone else seeing a pattern here...?
Only twice and it was rabbits and quail? Wow... I must be considered a life-long hunter then. My father, a true hunter, took me out more than once when I was a child and I tried to fire at a squirrel but missed.
This MUST mean I’m presidential material.
Feb 18 transcript in which Romney supports banning certain classes of firearms:
Stephanopoulos: Let’s talk about guns. You were supportive of the Brady bill, the handgun waiting period, in the past. You signed an assault weapon ban into law and you said, in the past, “I don’t line up with the NRA.”
Now, you
Mitt Romney: Well, on that issue.
Stephanopoulos: Now you’re a member of the NRA.
Mitt Romney: Yes, and I know the NRA does not support an assault weapon ban. So I don’t line up on that particular issue with the NRA, either does President Bush. He likewise says he supported an assault weapon ban.
Today we don’t have the Brady bill because we have instantaneous background checks. That’s no longer a operative or needed measure.
But I’m a strong proponent of Second Amendment rights. I believe people, under our Constitution, have the right to bear arms. [Just not “assault weapons”]
We have a gun in one of our homes. It’s not owned by me, it’s owned by my son, but I’ve always considered it sort of mine.
Stephanopoulos: When did you join the NRA?
Mitt Romney: Within the last year and I signed up for a lifelong membership. I think they’re doing good things and I believe in supporting the right to bear arms.
I’ve been a hunter all my life, not frequently, but as a boy, when I worked on a ranch in Idaho, we used to go out shooting rabbits, because they were eating all the barley, and I got pretty good with a single shot .22 rifle, and been quail hunting more recently.
So I’m a hunter and believe in Second Amendment rights, but I also believe that assault weapons are not needed in the public population.
[end transcript]
Does this demonstrate pro-gun-grabbing?
check your freepmail.
“Only twice and it was rabbits and quail? Wow... I must be considered a life-long hunter “
Yeah, by the same criteria I’m a pilot, scuba diver, and a race car driver!
I once sat in the cockpit of the Miss Bud racing boat, too, and I shook hands with Ronald Reagan.
I simply gave you the information, a better man would have appreciated the post.
Me, I'm in a quandary. I know enough about McCain and Giuliani to know that either would be about the stoooopidist presidential nominee the Republicans could dish up. This crap about Hillary or Obama or Edwards or Gore being so difficult to beat is just crap -- they're hated, despised, loathed, scorned, by Regular Joe Democrats as well as Republicans. Hell, Republicans could nominate Yosemite Sam and he'd be the next president. McCain and Giuliani are about the only ones who could lose to what the Democrats have on the roster so far.
I don't know much about Romney except that he has carefully navigated the fence between liberalism and conservatism, he's a good businessman, and some who I really respect support him ... but as a Californian who has watched Arnold (never, ever trust an Austrian!!!) betray so much in fundamental conservative principals, I am leery of left-leaning Republicans more than ever -- they cannot be trusted.
I hear through the grapevine from a smart source that there are serious doubts as to the business acumen and ethics of Duncan Hunter, so I'm leery of him. Fred Thompson, if he is what he says he is, would be great, but there again -- what he says and what he DOES are two different things. I appreciate it when folks like you cite actions rather than a candidates words to show where a guy REALLY stands on the issues.
To me, being:
Pro second amendment
Pro national defense and offense
Pro tax cuts
Pro school choice
Pro business/anti big government
Anti legal-normalization-of-homosexuality in our culture
-- in that order of priority -- are the most important things in a candidate.
Abortion doesn't make the list because unlike all the issues above, it is not dependent on the Rule of Man, but on morality and values. Illegal immigration doesn't make the list because it is a result of a combination of over-regulation of business and government largesse; when we elect candidates with philosophies that will combat overregulation and government largesse, the illegal immigration problelm (which is a symptom, not a cause) will disappear.
If wealthy John Kerry is insincere as a gun owner because he is rich enough to own several guns and offer them to guests at one or more of his homes for sporting use, yet does not, what does that say about the wealthy Romney, who also owns several homes, and does not own guns nor does he take his guests shooting?
Both men claim to be hunters and supporters of both the Second Amendment and Gun Bans.
Romney no longer claims to be a gun owner. There are lots of pictures of Kerry at skeet ranges with his buds, and also of him hunting. The picture of the quail hunt Romney went on does not have Romney in the frame.
I agree with your priorities.
My one big bone to pick with Mitt is his pretending to be pro-Second Amendment (note the distinction between that and RKBA) while supporting anti-gun laws including gun bans.
What hunting has to do with the second amendment?-—answer...nothing NADA...ZIP...bupkiss
My post had nothing to do with Romney.
I simply made a little post to keep people from getting an inflated view of Kerry that you evidently seem determined to sell.
Have you not read this thread?
Romney's gun-grabbing history has gotten plenty of play.
Why do you choose to ignore all the posts -- and the article -- that detail Mitt's anti-2A ways?
I’m no fan of Kerry, his RKBA positions, or the way he pandered to the masses in his failed presidential bid. He tried to pass himself off as a longtime hunter and serious gun owner and Second Amendment supporter. Yet he supported Brady and the AWB.
“Kin ah git me a huntin’ license heah?” fooled few people.
The major contrast between the pandering candidates is that Kerry at least had a gun or two (he originally said he had a captured Chinese assault rifle, which probably is true and illegal, but changed it to a demilled bolt gun), and he went hunting more than once, plus he had a photo album of him at skeet ranges. He accepted one or two gift shotguns in public and on stage.
But he is not a supporter of RKBA at all (and the point of the article questions Romney on that issue as well).
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