Posted on 12/21/2007 12:39:38 PM PST by AFA-Michigan
Romney slander on Reagan abortion record "totally untrue," former Reagan campaign manager said
(snip)
CBSNews.com: But the Romney people would argue that Ronald Reagan, whom you served as political director and campaign manager, changed his position (on abortion).
Ed Rollins: Let me tell you the Ronald Reagan story. The Ronald Reagan story which (the Romney people) have used over and over again is totally untrue. First of all, Roe vs. Wade had not occurred yet [during his early years as governor].
RONALD REAGAN WAS NEVER PRO-CHOICE.
Ronald Reagan signed a law that allowed women who had had psychiatric damage and were suicidal to have an abortion. He thought it was about maybe 300 a year, which is what he was told. You know, it turned out to be a very significant abortion bill because a lot of women just went and got a sign off from a psychiatrist.
Ronald Reagan was opposed to that from day one. He was very upset about that. So I mean I find real fault with Romney basically saying, "Ronald Reagan did this. Ronald Reagan did that." I mean I remember him basically saying he wasn't for Ronald Reagan. He belittled Ronald Reagan in '94 when he ran against Kennedy.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
“Please, lets stop calling it ‘pro-choice.’ Its ‘pro-abortion’.”
Agree 100%. In this case, I was only quoting Rollins.
It’s obvious that the term “pro-choice” has no meaning, since one of two things must be true: (1) it can be used interchangeably to describe both sides of the same issue, or (2) Mitt Romney is congenitally incapable of consistently telling the truth.
I believe it’s #2, as illustrated below:
“I think I’ve made it very clear. I WAS PRO-CHOICE, or effectively pro-choice, when I ran in 1994. As governor, I’m pro-life, and I have a record of being pro-life, and I’m firmly pro-life today.” (Mitt Romney, Associated Press, December 18, 2007)
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hjo2zpLNAjtxCVkBA1Xn9FYQ5tpQD8TK3G500
“I never called myself pro-choice. I never allowed myself to use the word ‘pro-choice,’ because I didn’t feel I was pro-choice. I would protect the law, I said, as it was, but I WASN’T PRO-CHOICE.” (Mitt Romney, Fox News Sunday, August 12, 2007)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293017,00.html
NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR-ELECT WINS ELECTION BY $500,000;
J. SCOTT ORR - Newhouse News Service. The Oregonian.
Portland, Or.: Nov 10, 1993. pg. A.10
Summary: Christine Todd Whitman’s top strategist says money was dispensed to discourage votes for her opponent
Campaign operatives for Christine Todd Whitman, New Jersey’s governor-elect, funneled “walking around money” to big-city black churches in the state in exchange for commitments from ministers not to deliver pre-election sermons supporting incumbent Democratic Gov. Jim Florio, Whitman’s top campaign strategist said Tuesday.
Ed Rollins, consultant to the Whitman campaign, told reporters that the campaign for the Republican gubernatorial candidate used approximately $500,000 in “walking around money” — money used to pay Election Day expenses — to make donations to black churches and to pay some political workers in the state’s urban centers to stay home on Election Day.
“We had a substantial amount of walking around money, which is a different game — somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million dollars,” Rollins said.
“We went into black churches, and we basically said to ministers who had endorsed Florio, `Do you have a special project?’ And they said, `We’ve already endorsed Florio.’ We said, `That’s fine . . . don’t get up on the pulpit Sunday and say it’s your moral obligation that you go on Tuesday to vote for Jim Florio,’ “ Rollins said.
During remarks at a breakfast meeting with reporters, Rollins... didn’t say which churches were targeted by the Whitman campaign.
He said the amounts the churches received varied depending on their size, adding that he did not personally arrange any of the payments: “Those were our community people who obviously knew what they needed to do and where they needed to do it.”
...
“What we did, I think, for the first time is we played the game the way the game is played in New Jersey or elsewhere. And I think to a certain extent our game plan was not to have this intensified vote in the areas we couldn’t obviously make up,” Rollins said.
In addition, Rollins said the Whitman campaign paid some Democratic political workers in the state’s cities to stay home on Election Day.
“We said to some of their key workers how much have they paid you to do your normal duty. Well we’ll match it, go home, sit and watch television,” Rollins said. He also failed to identify the recipients of those funds.
The people who disparage Ronald Reagan to puff up their own candidate REALLY irk me.
If you and your changing positions can’t stand on your own two feet, you shouldn’t be running for president.
Minor revision--I agree!
The people whodisparagelie about Ronald Reagan to puff up their own candidate REALLY irk me.
Yet whether it is true or not, I still reject the premise. The Romney supporters are basically trying to excuse what Romney did as governor by what Reagan did while the anti-abortion movement was stil in its infancy and there was many misconceptions about the entire process.
No politician in the 1990s or 2000s should be ignorant about what abortion is and what the key issues are. It's been thoroughly discussed. Comparing that to Reagan's time when it was still considered an impolite thing to discuss in public is just not relevant to Romney's flip flop.
Romney: I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. Im not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.
Romney is not now and never has been a Reagan-school conservative. He’s just one of many who have transformed the Republican Party into the Democrat-Lite Party.
Reagan was never pro-choice, but you are right, it shows real ignorance of history for them to try and confuse the 60s with the landscape of the post Roe vs Wade America.
Regardless of whether Reagan was or was not pro-choice can be debated, but the fact is Reagan LED the conservative movement for about a decade before he was elected in 1980. He didn’t convert his views in the year or two before the election. He established a set of principles that many here are still working for today. There is no Reagan in this election. Figures like him only arrive every many decades to change the political landscape for a generation.
And Ronald Reagan hasn’t been the only one Romney has thrown under the bus to try to justify his own defense of Roe v. Wade and abortion on demand.
You know, like when your kindergartener or teenager says, “Well, so-and-so did it too.”
The Jan Michaelson Show
WHO Radio
Des Moines, Iowa
Aug. 2, 2007
ROMNEY: “There are Mormons in the leadership of my church who are pro-choice. ...Every Mormon should be pro-life? That’s not what my church says.”
http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0807/Mitt_unplugged.html
Is there something bad about changing from pro-ABORTION to pro-LIFE? Not in my book. I hope everyone changes to pro-LIFE. I think it will happen. There was a time when large numbers of white Americans, and Europeans, and Africans, and Middle Easterners thought it was OK to enslave black captives from Africa. Speaking as a white American, it seems to me that the number of persons agreeing with the concept of slavery here in America is almost zero. Here is hoping that the numbers of all Americans believing that it is appropriate to MURDER babies will reach zero in the near future. I don’t think I will be voting for Romney, but I’m glad he is now pro-LIFE.
Wish I could comment on that, but I signed a confidentiality agreement.
If that were true, than Roe v. Wade would be considered pro-life.
Allowing abortion for "mental health" reasons is tanemount to allowing abortion on demand. Maybe Reagan was naive and did not grasp that, but signed what he signed.
It was not intended as anything other than presentation of fact.
“If that were true, than Roe v. Wade would be considered pro-life.”
You’re an idiot and wrong. They are not even close, not by a long shot.
Reagan's law allowed abortions for "mental health" reasons. In practice, that meant abortion on demand; it's very easy to get a shrink to say you need anything for your "mental health."
It didn't mean that back then. Though that is true today, it was only in recent decades that leftists judges have expanded the "mental health" definition to include any mood swing.
Not so... it allowed abortions when there was a "substantial risk" that continued pregnancy would "gravely impair" the "physical or mental health" of the mother.
Not quite the same thing.
any abortion for health of the mother instead of life of the mother will be easily exploited
you can be sure of it...
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