Posted on 01/21/2008 11:32:31 PM PST by maui_hawaii
I hear of the tag 'flip flop' being assigned to Mitt Romney by certain groups of people.
What I want to do is pick one (for this example) of where these people who make this charge are incorrect. In doing so, I will respond to that caller who called in to Rush yesterday and wanted Rush to tell her 'where is the record of Mitt's conservatism'.
I will answer her and all others in the process.
Now for facts. Mitt was running in a very liberal state that is friendly to gays and in fact is the hotbed of gay activism.
In the course of the several elections these gay activists were openly hostile to Republicans, and in particular a Mormon Republican.
For those who are unfamiliar with the background, the LDS Church, in one of the few times ever in history to do so, came out publicly and campaigned against gay marriage. In gay politics, Mormons are despised because they enrolled so many people and bankrolled and fought against the redefinition of family.
I remember even going door to door asking people to fight for traditional families.
Gay political extremists knew the LDS position on the matter and in their deluded kind of way tried to paint Mitt as a proactive gay hater. They did the same with the LDS church as a whole.
They got so extreme in their accusations that they were making claims that Mitt and Mormons advocated violence against gays and things like that.
So, what resulted was Mitt took a position that has never changed. He took a classy approach and did not lose his cool under fire.
What was that approach? Love the sinner but not the sin.
He said gays should not be persecuted, or have violence directed at them. He said gays had the right to live in peace. Life Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.
If they are two consenting adults and they happen to be gay, a public position cannot be to advocate extreme behavior against them. That being said, Mitt also said, while they can be gay all they want in their own homes, they are not, and should not have special treatment as the gay lobby was hoping for. The gay group wanted to redefine marriage so they are 'equal'...
Mitt gave a classy, but firm answer. Live in peace and do your thing if you must, but we are not redefining marriage--- and you (meaning the gay lobby) cannot accuse him of being an extreme right wing gay hater. That position is simply not true.
Mitt's position in a nutshell was, "no we do not approve of your lifestyle, but we will not do two things. 1. Persecute IE advocate violence against gays (as was the accusations) 2. Give them special rights and redefine marriage.
Can you see where he drew the line? I can.
While all this was going on, court cases were in the works and the gay lobby had summarily been put on their collective butts by Mitt Romney. Basically he inferred in no unqualified terms that they should grow up and that their extreme politics don't work.
"You won't let us be gay and be married so that means you are going to send the troops to bash us all in the head like a bunch of baby seals!"....stuff like that... Mitt exposed that for what it was. Hysterical politics aimed squarely at conservative values.
This group then got a victory in that a court case was unilaterally decided to redefine marriage. The gay lobby could not win in the legislature and they definitely couldn't win with the governor... so they got a fiat win in court as to how marriage is defined.
In short order not only was Mitt fighting this group, but he was in fact a leader in the fight for a constitutional ammendment for traditional marriage.
Look at the record. He was testifying for such from the get go and even in front of the Senate.
Mitt tried to disarm a hostile lobbying group, and the result was they got more hostile. You want to know why the MSM hates Mitt? Because he smoothly told them to screw off with their BS extreme politics. Because Mitt was standing his ground, the gay lobby went around him---and everyone else--- to get to their desired outcome.
People here are trying to make the case that Mitt is pro gay--- not so. His position has been clear and consistent. He recognizes that gays are going to exist and that there should not be violence against them. At the same time, their lifestyle should not be enshrined in law. Alternative lifestyle it is, and alternative lifestyle it will remain.
Where is the flip? There is none. Problem is you have people wanting to cherry pick what they want to selectively hear.
Didn't the NRA give Romney a B+ grade for his gun positions as Massachusetts Governor.
And didn't the NRA support and "sign off" on those very same proposals.
Why are you constantly trying to distort the Romney record which any person with half a brain can easily go look up on the Internet.
And I suggest people do just that and stop relying on these Romney haters who take little snippets of a comment here... and twist a little snippet there... and try to ruin a good and decent Republican candidate.
The ONLY candidate who has a snowball's chance in '08. -- Romney!
He has been AGAINST giving voters their vote.
He is FOR HillaryCARE=RomneyCARE (installed without a vote, of course)
He is FOR Gay Marriage (it was unconsistitutional but he allowed it, without a vote, of course)
He is FOR illegal aliens at his Home Sanctuary (until he was caught twice).
Romney "Disses" Amateur Radio In Televised Town Meeting (and why he won't get my vote)
I agree. McCain, Romney, Guiliani, Clinton - What's the difference? Obama and Edwards would be even worse.
That flyer is the biggest red herring, and in reality does nothing to refute Romney’s constant support and promotion of traditional marriage, good decent values, etc.
It was made by a low-level campaign worker in the heat of a Governors race in an uber-Lib state like Massachusetts.
Romney did NOT push any “homo legislation” or “gay marriage law” or any of the other phony accusations Romney haters like to throw about.
Anyone with half a brain can go check on Romney’s real record — and NOT these out-of-context statements from some age-old campaign.... which really meant nothing.
Romney: "I told you what my position was, and what I, what I did as governor; the fact that I received the endorsement of the NRA."
THEN:
Romney: "“That’s not going to make me the hero of the NRA”
Boston Herald (1994)
. Romney: " “I don’t line up with the NRA.”
Boston Globe, January 14, 2007
OK - I’ll bite.
I will accept what you say on the Homosexual issue (while it doesn’t match what I have heard) for the time being.
How about the issue of abortion? Mitt’s own words were that Abortion should be freely available and unrestricted (not a quote). He now claims to be pro-life. The LDS church is strongly pro-life.
Something to explain there... And this isn’t the last.
Commonwealth Care was NOT "Universal Health Care". It was heralded and supported by the conservative Heritage Foundation as a conservative health care solution.
I own several guns, and I'm a big proponent of the Second Amendment -- but I don't always line up exactly with the NRA either.
Maybe 99% -- maybe 95% -- I dont study every single issue paper that comes out of the NRA's legal department every day.
Bottom line is that the NRA gave Mitt Romney fairly good marks for his leadership as Massachusetts Governor.
“All people will be afforded their civil rights”?
I agree with you completely!
THAT is the most logical well-thought-out statement I've read in the past two weeks -- my own comments included.
Mitt Romney is a good and decent conservative who tried to put some sanity back in Massachusetts -- and got pushed and pulled from the uber-lib legislature and media every minute of every day.
Yet he still governed remarkably conservative, even though he occasionally had to give a tidbit to get things done.
If Romney had won the Governorship of a conservative western state -- and didn't have to do 'politics' to get things done -- he would be hailed today as a conservative hero.
In a sense, Romney's record is all that much more remarkable in how he was able to navigate through the minefields of Kennedy-Kountry.
Romney is an honest, decent faith-based conservative with great smarts and business sense who happened to make some pandering statements during the heat of a 15-year-old campaign against uber-Lib Ted Kennedy.
His record was remarkable considering his OTHER opponents was the uber-PC 'gotcha' media of Massachusetts.
Did he make a compromise here or there? Suppose so.
But people have got to stop the hysteria over a few toss-away statements Romney made.
Romney was and still is a fairly conservative man -- as evidenced by the animosity and opposition he STILL gets from the abortion and homo lobbies.
Grow up. He asked for the topics to be dealt with in an orderly fashion. If you can’t do that, then find another place to crap on.
Considering that you have probably unwittingly done business with a company which employs an illegal alien or two, I guess that makes YOU in favor of illegal immigrants also.
* He is FOR illegal aliens at his Home Sanctuary (until he was caught twice).
And we should expect everyone who hires a company to first do a background check on their employees?
Get real.
The aurgument that he was in a liberal state and had to take a classy stand on the issue is complete BS.
Many true conservatives have marched off to washington and have come back much more liberal. If Romney pandered in to liberals in MA he will surely do it in Washington.
Actually, he did not sign it into law.
The law already existed. The law said “man and woman”, the court ruled that the terms “man” and “woman” were not specifically written to be gender-specific, and therefore fell under their rule that the word “man” and “woman” in a law must be treated as “person”.
They then ordered that all people party to the suit would be allowed their “relief”, which was to be married, and that all other persons similarly situated would also be allowed their “relief”.
They then gave the legislature 6 months to re-write the law however they saw fit, for example to explicitly state that “man” was meant to indicate the male gender, and “woman” the female gender”.
If the legislature had done so, the court ruling would have been moot, and a new trial would have been needed so the court could determine if the legislature had a compelling government interest in restricting marriage.
Of course, the legislature did not do that, because the legislature supported gay marriage. That’s why they couldn’t get 50 votes (a minority) to allow gay marriage to appear on the ballot.
Romney tried to go back to the court, but in Mass. the governor is not allowed to represent the state in court, only the AG, and the AG refused to take Romney’s case to court.
So he implemented the law as passed by the legislature and interpreted by the court (without modification by the legislature, it was clear the legislature agreed with the court).
However, he did find an obscure part of the law which allowed him to prohibit marriages to out-of-state couples, thus saving the rest of the union from having to deal with the problem in a widespread fashion.
At every step fo the way, Romney acted in opposition to gay marriage, which was not surprising, because he was against gay marriage in 1994, and was against gay marriage in 2002.
His biggest fault was not realising in 2002 that the courts might do this — at that time, he opposed a marriage amendment because he thought the law was sufficient. Interestingly, even AFTER the court ruling, some mitt-haters claim the law WAS sufficient (believing he should have defied the court), even while blaming him for not pushing an amemdment that we now see would not have passed, and wouldn’t pass even AFTER the court made gay marriage legal.
Rush is very clever, he knows that he would lose credibility if came out and fully supported Romney today. Right now he is echoing the sediments of the conservative base. Give him a few weeks, and he will have made a complete transformation to a Romney supporter.
THank you for posting how Romney’s position is opposed to people who are gay who want special rights.
I do not believe government should prohibit a woman from getting pregnant and having a child based on her sexual preference.
I think children should be raised in homes with male and female parents, and government should support that arrangement through marriage and civil union laws, but government should not prohibit people from making their own decisions privately.
I guess we could force them to have abortions if we catch them, or force them to give up their children for adoption?
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