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.
Human Events is a liberal rag paid off by Romney for that.... Oh wait, who did they endorse? Darn, what a dilemna for the mitt-haters.
Ah, the good old days. IF only we could wave our magic wand and go back to the days when people took personal responsibility, where charity as a major force, when people didn’t take advantage of free things because they knew they were freeloaders, and when government hadn’t driven most of the charity work out of business in order to provide a more orderly and “fair” process of giving things away.
How do you implement that plan? Do you think the non-profit non-public hospital system is ready to take every indigent person today? BTW, I’m not trying to mock you, as I am sympathetic to your point of view. IN fact, I wonder sometimes why we even have “public” hospitals.
If we are going to have public hospitals, why would only private hospitals be expected to do charity, while public hospitals were immune? That would drive up the costs of running private hospitals as the public facilities would get only people who pay, and would have more money to improve, while the private hospitals would be saddled with the burden of providing free care, and people with money would turn to the better-funded facilities.
So how do we get rid of the public hospitals, and turn them back into private hands, so we can have real competition? The plan has to deal with that, along with the inevitable increase in deaths as we cut off the current benefits and people slowly migrate to the begging plan.
Frankly, there’s much more serious problems, like the idea of medical “insurance” covering routine exams. INSURANCE shouldn’t insure against known and repeated events, but against unknown and unique ones.
Romney care is not the most conservative approach to the problem. But it is a more conservative approach than the status quo, and it is a push toward a market-based solution which if implemented, could mitigate the problems enough to relieve the pressure for true socialized medicine.
Let me tell you how it is living off the dole.
You have not hundreds, and not thousands, and not even hundred thousands--more like millions of people who go to the hospital and just 'show up' with every manner of illness pretended or real.
If the hospital doesn't treat them the hospital gets sued or other things along those lines.
So the hospitals treat the patients that are there and those people run up massive bills. Collectively it is a huge and substantial bill they run up.
Then, they give the finger to the hospital and don't pay. Not a nickel.
In some places for every 3 to 4 people going to the hospital something like one does not have insurance. The other three then have to pay for the one.
What happens though is the government steps in and pays for it. They subsidize the whole lot. With MY tax money.
AND to make it worse, in one of the debates, if you were watching Mitt said something like (I forgot the statistic) 25% of the defaults in his state were from people earning more than $100K per year.
We are talking billions of dollars in subsidies to hospitals because of this very thing alone.
That is how it is living off the dole.
Your rights are being violated every time that you have to pay for someone else's health care. Right now, that is what you are doing. The whole idea of mandatory auto insurance is based upon a similar premise. That your rights are violated every time an uninsured motorist gets in an accident with you. To prevent you from having to pay for something that was THEIR fault, the mandatory auto insurance laws were put into place. No, you didn't buy your auto insurance from the government, but from private insurers. Similarly, health care plans like Commonwealth Care make it mandatory that everyone prove that they have coverage whether it is private or they can individually cover their own medical costs. You don't buy your health care from the government, but from private insurers.
This health care solution relies upon the free market and provides individual choice while keeping you and me from having to pay for other people's health care.
You say that you are young and don't want to buy health insurance. So, what happens if you are diagnosed with cancer or some other disease, or are injured, and you require highly expensive health care beyond your current means, what do YOU propose should happen? Health care plans such as Commonwealth Care prevents the rest of us from being forced to pay for YOU health care that you can't pay for due to your own negligence.
Sounds kinky. If you have photos, please do not post them.
How do you implement that plan? Do you think the non-profit non-public hospital system is ready to take every indigent person today? BTW, I’m not trying to mock you, as I am sympathetic to your point of view. IN fact, I wonder sometimes why we even have “public” hospitals.
. Magic wands? You're the one that wants to hand the government a magic wand via centralized force and edict to enforce "personsal responsibility." Of course, you also apparently believe the fairy tale that government will only use this magic wand quick fix to do "good" things and not turn it around to destroy freedom. History suggests otherwise.
. You seem to believe that fundamental human nature has changed since "the good old days" thus we must force people to do the "right" thing a la Mitt and Hillary. There have always been freeholders.....but Americans before your all powerful government stepped in had ways to do deal with this problem. They weren't the all seeing angels you make them out to be but, given an environment of true freedom and repsonsibility, proved creative in solving problems.
Now....I don't believe this problem can be solved (or, in your wonkish words "implemented") overnight via a magic wand (Mitt does however). I support a gradual transition to free markets, individual responsibility, and reduced welfare. Mittcare is not a "transition" to anything because it will (and has increased) the power of government over the individual and thus contradicts the claimed goal.
That’s freeloaders, not freeholders.
Impeachment.
You can pick apart Romney over the semantics of his statement about being "always" ProLife -- but I know exactly what he means.
For example, I hate the idea of quota's, yet in my former job as a newspaper reporter, I was forced not only to hire on a quota basis, but also to discover and WRITE stories solely based on ethnicity.
I was constantly having to explain to people that I needed a story, or an idea for a story, about such and such an ethnicity --- even though I though it ridiculous.
It was either uphold the company policy, or else.
Romney, I believe, so wanted to be elected Governor of Massachusetts that he likewise did mental contortions to convince the 80% liberal voters of Massachusetts that he "really" did want to uphold abortion laws.
I also believe that Romney, if he had been Governor of a more conservative western state, would never have made statements declaring himself a ProChoice person.
Was it smarmy of Romney to talk up his proChoice credentials just to get elected? Yep. No doubt.
But I think he felt it necessary to win in a state where he ultimately DID govern with ProLife tendancies. (check the record, not his goofy statements)
Did you ever find that proof that Romney did not deliver what he promised during a campaign upon being elected?
Here is the thing. The far right ultra conservatives are afraid of pragmatism. They expect that governing can be done solely according to pure ideology. It has never happened in this country and it never will.
In fact, the only nations governed by pure ideology are communist states and dictatorships. The odd thing about the far right is that they seem to desire a president who is a dictator. Their ideal candidate falls in line with their all-or-nothing views and has power to enforce these. At the same time they call for less government, they cry out for government to enforce personal, moral choices. They would have women imprisoned for having abortions.
Extremism may help to clarify issues, but it is not the law of the land. Freedom prevails under the Constitution and that means that if homosexuals wish to live together, they may. Private agencies allow them to adopt children who need homes. Legitimate churches will not marry them to one another, but it’s only a matter of time for the Episcopal church.
The important thingj, as always, is to keep the Democrats out of power because through their judicial picks and legislation, they will continue to trample our Constitution and turn Liberty into libertine-ism. They will dictate amoral choices.
Mitt Romney is far too moral of a man, obedient to the Constitution, to the principle of Liberty and to his Christian Mormon faith, to allow amoral libertine-ism to become the law of the land.
I agree. Thanks for the comments.
...and the link.
Don’t be silly. Nobody has a problem with a conservative merely because they win in a liberal state. The problem is with a guy who won in a liberal state precisely because he promised to be a liberal and kept his promise. Someone who was comfortable as governor of Massachusetts and with whom, by and large, Massachusetts was comfortable, has no business running for national office as a Republican. If you want a California analogy look no further than the Governator.
Mitt Romney is poison. He is far too phony to win a national election and probably too phony to win a nomination. His moral perception is so skewed that he spent most of his adult life as an enthusiastic promoter of “abortion rights.” His understanding of constitutional government is so weak that he passively accepted the Mass. SJC’s gay marriage ruling. He is a poseur who holds no principle as dear as he holds his own ambition. He is despicable.
Tom McClintock is a good man and you owe him an apology for comparing him to Romney.
Once again I agree. Good comments. I sure wish folks could see it, acknowledge it, accept it, and act on it.
Nonsense. Nobody expects all or nothing from Mitt. They only expect him to take steps to reduce (or at least not increase) government power. We'd be overjoyed if he gave us half (or even one percent) of a small government loaf. By pushing through Mittcare, however, he showed that he does not want a gradual transtition toward more freedom. Instead, he proves that he favors radically increasing government power over our lives.
This statement is ignorant nonsense. Romney was obligated as the Governor of Massachusetts to announce that the SJC had made a ridiculous ruling and that the state government would give it no effect. He was obligated to execute the law, not follow the absurd dictates of three fools who happen to be judges. If he had the slightest talent for leadership that is what he would have done. He didn’t because he doesn’t.
Either Romney doesn’t understand the proper roles of the judiciary and the executive in a properly functioning constitutional order or he approved of the SJC decision mandating gay marriage. Either way he has no business running for national office as a Republican.
No he didn't.
He said he saw his father march with MLK.
Whether he saw it on TV or from the sidelines of the parade I don't know.
(in a 1978 interview with the Boston Herald, Romney had also claimed, “My father and I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Detroit.”)
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_the_stil_071226_romney_habitually_su.htm
Since Romeny and his daddy marched with Dr. King, I would think that Mitt would at least have one picture of he and his daddy marching with Dr. King.
Or, Willard simply has difficulty telling the truth.
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