Posted on 11/09/2007 6:22:08 PM PST by Doofer
Romney puffs up his record.
Summary
Mitt Romney casts himself as tough on illegal immigration in a new ad in which he says that, as Massachusetts governor, "I authorized the State Police to enforce immigration laws." He doesn't mention that his order never took effect. It came in the closing days of his administration and was rescinded by his successor, as we wrote back in August.
He also promises, "As president, I'll . . . cut funding for sanctuary cities." Maybe so, but as governor he took no action against several such towns in his state.
We find Romney misleading on both counts.
Analysis
Romney's ad began airing Nov. 1 and has run in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Cops on the Case
Romney claims he put state troopers on the trail of illegals in his state.
Romney: As governor, I authorized the state police to enforce immigration laws.
Well, yes. But, as we noted in August, he didn't do so until he had less than a month left in his term. He was already considering running for president, and the new governor-elect was expected to rescind the arrangement.
Romney began talking about giving troopers the power to make arrests on immigration charges earlier in 2006, but he didn't sign an agreement with the federal government - a necessary condition for that authority to be granted - until Dec. 13 of that year.
Romney was scheduled to leave office Jan. 4, 2007. Democrat Deval Patrick, who had won the race to succeed Romney, had already said the program was a "bad idea" because troopers were busy enough as it was.
Sure enough, Patrick rescinded the agreement within his first week in office so troopers could "focus on enforcing Massachusetts laws." The policy never had a chance to take effect, because those troopers chosen to carry it out hadn't yet begun a required six-week training course.
Gimme Shelter
Romney shifts to promise-making mode as he continues:
Romney: As President, I'll oppose amnesty, cut funding for sanctuary cities and secure our borders.
Romney might well get tough on sanctuary cities in the future, but he didn't when he was governor.
During his tenure, at least four Massachusetts cities enacted or renewed legislation declaring themselves sanctuaries for illegal immigrants. Brookline and Cambridge reaffirmed their longtime status as sanctuary cities in so many words.
Somerville and Orleans didn't officially deem themselves "sanctuaries," but Somerville affirmed its "long-standing policies in support of all immigrants," while Orleans forbade city officials from turning in illegal immigrants without probable cause.
We asked Romney's campaign if he had acted against these cities, but they didn't provide us with any examples. As far as we were able to determine in our own research, Romney made no attempts to penalize, censure, or cut funding to them.
I SURE AS HELL CAN!
It pulls you off the subject, Mitt. It wastes your time, changes the subject. Gorilla dust.
FDR said he would keep America out of war and was elected on it. He was lying at the time.
Johnson said he wouldn’t send American boys to Vietnam. But, Johnson would say anything.
Immigration vs illegals is a loser for Dems.
Changing the subject does not answer the question either.
So facts don’t matter? It is just your blind hatred of Mitt?
Do your own research. Ever hear of google?
Don’t ask me.
Do you like my tagline?
*snicker*
So Romney, as one of the first governors to get, or even propose that the police get involved with immigration is meaningless? I don’t remember any other governors doing it then.
The likelihood of a change of heart is normally remote when politics is involved. It is a smart set-up, but I do not trust the mitt to catch or solve the fast balls of politics. Mitt is spending time attempting to tell people he has changed his mind.
but...More of the same, is always more of the same. Romney, in mho, is another johnny-come-lately offering only more of the same, and the democrat's nominee will make mincemeat out of him....and America will see more of the same or worse.....mho
Meaningless, yes.
Because nothing he ever did in office changed the status quo.
He sure made an attempt at it, but it was less than a month before he left office. So he still came up with a big fat zero.
He meant well, I’m sure. So did Rudy.
I have researched Romney thoroughly, and that is how I came to appreciate him. I suggest you all do it.
I researched him because of all the attacks around here. No one could be as bad as he was being made out to be.
I find the trash posted around here to be distortions of truth or out right slanderous lies. It has all been refuted time and again on these threads.
For your edification, here’s the real Mitt Romney.
1. Mitt is a liberal. How do you think he got elected to the most left wing state in America? He was as pro-abortion, pro-gay agenda, pro-gun control as Ted Kennedy when elected governor. He was pro-choice when he was elected and pro-abortion when he left the governor’s office. When he was elected governor, the Baked Bean State did not have gay marriage. When he left, it did. When he was elected, Massachusetts had a Republican governor for nearly two decades. When he left, it didn’t. What it had was a Hillary disciple who is now transforming the Cradle of Liberty into an amalgam of the Soviet Union, Sodom and Las Vegas. Imagine what Mitt could do as president.
2. He’s that liberal?! He gave Massachusetts a socialist government health care plan entitled “Commonwealth Care” that some call Hillarycare as he was walking out the door. And, apparently he didn’t know it included abortion as a health benefit. Because by then, he had discovered abortion was “wrong.”
And speaking of health, Mitt presided over the opening of the most corrupt and most expensive public works project in U.S. history – The Big Dig tunnel-bridge system. This project killed nearly a dozen people in the 48 months since it opened. When an immigrant woman was crushed to death by a cement-ceiling panel that fell on her as she traveled through one of the new tunnels, Mitt went on TV and said he would get to the bottom of this dangerous, deadly project. But he didn’t. Here was a public safety issue a conservative could have made a presidential-run-reputation on, exposing the Democrat corruption and fixing the problems. But he ignored it, preserving the public health menace for future victims. Instead, he took campaign contributions from international Big Dig contractors.
3. I thought he was pro-life? Romney’s Massachusetts health care plan says “no.” The plan covers abortion. What kind of Pro-lifer thinks abortion should be part of his health care plan? Romney signed this bill into law after he claims he had a discussion with an anonymous Harvard doctor wherein he discovered abortion was morally wrong.
Would it be too cynical to suggest the Harvard doctor was a PHD at the Kennedy School of Government who gave him a lot of computer printouts on Republican voters showing they don’t like abortion? Was it then he “discovered” abortion was wrong ( i.e. the wrong position for a conservative presidential candidate)?
Unlike Reagan who had a true turnaround on abortion, Romney has ping-ponged back and forth on this issue for years. As a 1994 U.S. Senate candidate, he said he had believed for nearly a quarter century that abortion should be “safe and legal.” Yet by 2001, the Salt Lake City Tribune quoted him as saying, “I do not wish to be labeled pro-choice.”
A year later, running for governor in Massachusetts, Romney was definitely Pro-choice and promised he would not touch any abortion law. During a candidate’s debate, he was so firmly Pro-choice, he renounced an endorsement from Massachusetts’ Citizens for Life.
But last year in South Carolina, a modern day miracle occurred. Romney declared, “I am firmly Pro-life...I was always for life.”
4. But he does stand for family values, right? If you think two guys getting married constitutes a family, then yes, he’s into family values. Publicly, he was as normal and upstanding a family values guy as you’ll see. But privately, he seemed to be working for the gay agenda. When the Massachusetts’ Supreme Court imposed gay marriage on the citizens of the Commonwealth, Romney could have exercised a “bill of address” to impeach the activist judges. But he didn’t. He signed something he didn’t have to directing town clerks to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples or be fired. One Justice of the Peace Linda Gray Kelley did lose her job because of her religious views against gay marriage.
Romney went even further however and directed his Department of Health to change the state marriage licenses to read “Party A” and “Party B” replacing “Husband” and “Wife.”Romney was under no legal obligation to do either of these things. Would a true family values governor do this?
He now claims to support a constitutional amendment to protect marriage. Yet in 2002 then governor Romney called a similar attempt to amend the Massachusetts’ Constitution “too extreme.”
He’s the kind of family values guy who distributes pink fliers proclaiming, “Mitt and Kerry wish you a great Pride Weekend” during “Gay Pride” events. Oh, he’s against the gay agenda!! And he’s for it.
5. But he’s a fiscal conservative, right? When it comes to spending money, he is more liberal than Ted K. He’s spent the gross national product of small nations on media, which accounts for all the good press he’s gotten. Ninety percent of voters may not want him, but 99 percent of the media loves him - even conservative talk radio show hosts.
Big spenders Hillary and Ted K praised the health care law signed by Romney. Coincidentally, it is quite similar to a plan unveiled by Hillary dubbed, “Healthy Choices.” Romney Care increases government mandates, regulations, costs and bureaucracy with less choice for consumers. The Congressional Budget Office noted that this level of government intervention and regulation was “unprecedented.”
Unprecedented – as in – even the out-of-control socialist Democrats hadn’t gone this far. Sally Pipes, of the Pacific Research Institute who reviewed Romney Care in a recent Wall St. Journal article said the governor’s plan was in “intensive care” right after birth. Only months after going into effect, the plan was costing Bay Staters $150 million more than the public was first told.
Premiums are nearly double what Romney promised. Keep in mind, Massachusetts already has the highest health care costs in the world. And Mitt increased them. Let’s connect the dots.
RomneyCare will take “Taxachusetts” into the 75 percent tax rate. That’s his fiscal legacy to the place American Democracy began. Imagine what Mitt could do as president.
6. But he’ll elect conservative judges, right? Romney loves to preach passionate sermons against “judicial activism.” He promised to nominate strict conservative constructionists to the federal bench. The problem is, his record disagrees. The Boston Globe reports that as governor, Romney “passed over GOP lawyers for three quarters of the 36 judicial court vacancies he faced, instead tapping registered Democrats or Independents including two gay lawyers who have supported expanded same-sex rights.”
7. Are you saying he can’t be trusted? Ted K called him John Kerry. The term he used was “Multiple Choice Mitt,” i.e. Mitt takes numerous positions on issues. He’s for it, against it and – oh what the heck – he’s such a nice guy he agrees with both sides. When it comes to issues Ted is right, Mitt looks like John Kerry. The good thing is voters seem to understand Romney better than the media. A recent Pew Center Poll found only 12 percent of respondents thought of Mitt Romney when the word “honest” was presented to them-the lowest percentage of the four major Republican candidates.
For all you Iowa-New Hampshire-South Carolina gun owners, keep this in mind. Mitt is for and against the 2nd amendment. While campaigning in New Hampshire last April, he said to a man wearing an NRA hat that he was a “life long hunter.” Romney’s campaign quickly issued a retraction, admitting he’d only hunted twice in his life. He declared his love for Massachusetts’ fascistic gun laws and favors the Brady Law, which the NRA opposes. Perhaps the time will come when he “discovers” the second amendment is a good thing. But it can only happen during an election campaign.
8. Well then, what’s all this about Mitt being the “pragmatic” Republican choice? Ah yes. Keep in mind, pragmatic means “what works.” Mitt has a voter approval rating down around that of the Pelosi congress, in spite of all the media’s acting as his press agent. Voters don’t trust him. The idea that he is the Hillary-slayer is at odds with his record, which...uh... has much in common with Hillary, in particular the gay-friendly, socialist health care stuff.
If pragmatic means “what works,” then what is it about Mitt that works? When most Americans wouldn’t vote for Mitt in spite of all the money he’s thrown out and all the media glorification, doesn’t that seem to be the opposite of pragmatism? Contrary to conservative talk radio common wisdom, Mitt is the un-pragmatic choice. If Mitt does to America what he did to the “Birthplace of American Democracy,” America will be in a nose-dive by 2012.
Gregg Jackson is a radio talk show host on WRKO in Boston and author of “Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies: Issue By Issue Responses to the Most Common Claims of the Left from A to Z.”
I'll work very hard to tell all those whose houses I visit for precinct walking that this man is the way to go. I wish I could have all their e-mail addresses, because I would send out the YouTube link to them all.
It was superior, and a lot of credit goes to Glenn Beck making it feel like we were all right there, with the questions we wanted asked. It was such an "across the kitchen table" type interview. GREAT job, Glenn!
I kind of feel sorry for sons that follow their fathers dreams.
Mitt is 60. The die is cast and it has been my experience that men don’t change.
I wished he had run again. Maybe built up the Party, but he got his ticket punched and has moved on.
He reminds me more of HW Bush, than GW. GW to his credit, won’t be moved if he feels something is the right thing. There is some iron in him, although it is often characterized as too dumb to change.
I can not, and do not know of anything, at all, politically that Mitt has stayed consistent on. Maybe you do. Please tell me.
I can dig up trash and lies and distortions on any candidate and would that make you think it was gospel?
Just because someone says something, doesn’t make it true. The author qbviously had an anti-Mitt agenda, or he might have said something flattering about this great American.
Are you jealous of him?
Besides a dimes worth of difference is not much difference.
If you do some research, you will find he has always been conservative. Like myself, actually, he one time believed that the state should not be involved in abortion.
We all grow and change. I think Ronald Reagan did also.
I find nothing in his record in Mass that wasn’t conservative. There are distortions posted around here, however.
Billary is it. Actually the Democrats are a true conservative party. In that they have no new ideas, and are unable to act on any new ones. They must protect at all cost their entrenched positions, for the basest of reasons, money.
okay...I prefer a Conservative with a buck fifty of difference. I simply prefer slowing... over a head-long dash over the cliff. This is just me....and mho
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.