Posted on 11/06/2007 2:08:50 PM PST by Spiff
I spoke to Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation and a founder of the Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority, about his endorsement of Mitt Romney.
“I felt it would come down to a contest between Giuliani and Romney,” Weyrich said. “I don’t want Giuliani as the nominee because a lot of our values voters will defect... I know the same argument is made about Romney, but eventually, I think those voters can be brought around. There is a hardcore group that absolutely will not vote for Giuliani… I don’t think they’ll go for a third party candidate, I think they’ll stay home. I think there’s no convincing them. I’ve talked to a number of these folks. Even though they recognize that Hillary is a real problem, they think that it’s better to have somebody bad like that than it is to have somebody halfway reasonable.”
On the other candidates, Weyrich said each one, ultimately, had flaws too large to earn his endorsement.
“I’m on the permanent executive committee of the Arlington Group, which was formed to push for the Federal Marriage Amendment. We’ve got [Fred] Thompson who says he can’t support that. I can’t push this for the past several years and then say, ‘oh, that’s not so important.’ … I’ve been working with candidates for close to fifty years I recognize candidates with fire in the belly. I’ve got to tell you, I do not think Thompson really wants to be elected that badly.”
“As for McCain, I can’t support him — McCain-Feingold is a dealbreaker, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Huckabee, I came close to supporting him, and if we were running for some sort of religious organization, I would support him, but we’re not. He has compromised on so many conservative issues, I simply can’t be for him. Every time you turn around, he’s taking the wrong stand on a different issue.”
“I know there’s the issue that Romney has flip-flopped, but so have most of the other candidates,” Weyrich said. “I’ve questioned him very thoroughly and I’m of a mind that he is sincere in his change of heart. I may be wrong but I have interviewed hundreds of candidates over the years, and I have a sense of these things.
Weyrich said he wasn’t worried about Romney’s comparatively low name ID at this point.
“If he wins Iowa, New Hampshire, maybe wins in South Carolina, that it’ll take care of itself. Anybody who wins in all of those states is going to get a lot of coverage.”
Weyrich said other candidates sought his nomination, but that he reached out to Romney, not the other way around. “I was impressed with the dynamism of the candidate. He’s a candidate that will impress the American public.”
Paul Weyrich Talks About Why He Endorsed Romney - And Not the Others
National Review Online
Jim Geraghty
6 November 2007
I don’t see 30piecesofsilver in the keywords. Fredheads must be asleep. :-)
So in order to be a good Christian I can't just vote Republican, I have to vote for a very specific Republican.
Can you forward me the email you got from God where he informed you of this?
No thank you. His record is that of a liberal abortionist socialist. I don’t believe his convenient presidential bid conversion. End of story.
I'm a solid Romney supporter, but I must say, this fuss over marriage amendment puzzles me a little.
Yes, I support the amendment too. But I don't see why it's all that important for the president to support it.
Are people forgetting the fact that the president is in no way involved in the amendment process? To pass, an amendment must be approved by 2/3 of both houses of Congress and then be approved by 3/4 of all state legislatures. The president has literally no say in the matter.
Hence I really don't understand why everyone is focusing so much on what a presidential candidate thinks about this or that proposed Constitutional amendment. It's completely irrelevant to the office.
Interesting observation.
Your ridiculous tagline makes me want a new tagline.
“Yes, I support the amendment too. But I don’t see why it’s all that important for the president to support it.”
The president has to offer moral leadership. If he isn’t for it then he is against it. And if he is against it then he is siding with the left wing pinkos, gay rights activists and other assorted fringe groups. Not a very good place to be.
Weyrich and Dobson are right. And many candidates in their eagerness to please everyone end up pleasing no one. Others take a stand and ally themselves with the right people. We’ll see which approach works out best in the end.
What do you consider key states ? I spoke the truth and nothing but the truth . Mitt consistently polls in the low double digits ... get used to it , because if that’s all he has after pumping massive resources into certain states , he’s done .
I absolutely read the endorsement and came to the conclusion that Weyrich knows that he is going to have to convince / sell / con people into coming to the Romney camp . Pathetic ...
Excerpts follow:
Douglas W. Kmiec is a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University. He served as Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He serves now as a co-chair of the Romney for President Advisory Committee on the Constitution and the Courts...
Grasping the significance of the rule of law is one of the most understated aspects of the current presidential campaign. While virtually every Republican candidate has said something adequate about avoiding judicial activism, legislating from the bench, or a la Richard Nixon, being a strict constructionist, only one, Mitt Romney, truly has demonstrated by his state executive experience as Governor that he is capable of sustaining, without the distractions of politics or friendship, an historically-informed appreciation for what John Locke meant by the rule of law in his Treatise on Government: general enactments, prospectively applied, that are enforced evenhandedly and interpreted by a disinterested and capable judge. Maybe Romney is inspired by the knowledge that the historic phraseology "rule of law" comes from the original Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, which noted that the powers of government shall be kept separate, and specifically, that "the judicial power shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men." Or perhaps its simply Romney's unalloyed belief that the rule of law must never be allowed to be distorted as partisan or contradicting of such fundamental values as life or marriage between a man and a woman. But whatever the source of the inspiration, my conversations with Governor Romney and study of his past state judicial appointments convince me that a President Romney will make nominations in the tradition of Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas, and before all else, will insist that the women and men to be appointed have a demonstrated record of valuing the rule of law in the fuller sense discussed here...
Finally, likely headed to the Court's docket is the invalidation by a lower court of the District of Columbia's handgun ban. Here again because this is another issue that divides many people, we need to be able to count on the integrity of the justices to resolve matters. As Governor Romney has said about this case, "I hope the Roberts court takes the Parker case and upholds the Bill of Rights . . . ." Governor Romney recognizes that the best way to respect the Second Amendment - like other protections in the Bill of Rights - results when, but only when, the justices are fairly guided by the original meaning of the constitutional text.
Thompson never said the he couldn’t win and you know it.
It’s already been cleared up as another out of context smear , but I guess you missed it .
| Intrade Political 'Securities' | Percentage | US$ Traded |
|---|---|---|
| Rudy Giuliani to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2008 | 40.4% | $1.2M |
| Fred Thompson to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2008 | 6.0% | $919K |
| John McCain to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2008 | 7.1% | $1.5M |
| Mitt Romney to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2008 | 29.7% | $999K |
| Mike Huckabee to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2008 | 6.2% | $607K |
| Newt Gingrich to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2008 | 0.3% | $590K |
Is Intrade more reliable that a poll?
Fred hasn’t left Rudy alone. He took him head-on in the last debate.
I don’t think he is secretly (subliminally) shilling for Rudy.
Fred has no chance now. He really doesn’t want it and said as much.
Politics is a very strange entity where the truly better candidates too often don’t win.
yes, it factors in all the polls but also incorporates the trends, whereas a single isolated poll is only a snapshot of the moment.
I am not bashing anyone. I simply stated my reservations about Mitt Romney. I don't happen to believe his "pet candidate" is the one who can rally the troops, either. His negatives are too high. That is a problem.
The endorsement was a letdown to read. That is how I saw it. I was expecting-oh, I don’t know- a little more fire. A little more passion. He wasn’t very convincing for someone making an endorsement that is all I meant.
Mitt’s donations were very welcome.
Nonsense .
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