Posted on 01/29/2008 1:43:23 PM PST by icwhatudo
Did not see it posted yet, here we go folks!
I disagree. That’s not where the republican voters are. Romney CAN make a case on the immigration issue that will resonate, but it has to be more nuanced than the Huckabee “sign my soul away” position. Romney gets support from smart people who see him as a smart guy who will get things done. The NEW Huckabee sign-the-pledge position isn’t “getting things done”, except for those whose only goal is to punish people who like our country, and who could care less about whether there is any compelling societal benefit in a “better way”.
After all, If you really want rabit anti-illegal-immigrant, you can just go with Huckabee now, he’s signed the pledge. McCain is way to liberal on immigration, but you need to grab the middle ground.
The problem is that part of the solution to illegal immigration is a guest worker program that ensures americans get first cut, but provides labor for work that needs to be done when there are no americans doing the work, at a real wage and with controls to make sure the immigrants leave when they are done.
This has nothing to do with “punishing the illegals”, we can punish them and kick them out AND do guest worker, but the “coalition” which stopped amnesty had to include everybody who opposed foreigners, including major organizations like NumbersUSA who really are opposed to immigration in all it’s forms.
Romney COULD be the smart man who shows the right way through the minefield, but I don’t know if it’s possible because I’ve been in that position and both sides destroy you.
In my view, Romney has to stop responding to McCain, and just be himself. Look how it works for Obama. People are drawn to hope, to positive views. Romney’s biggest flaw is that he has a campaign staff that is too negative — which is why so many people hate him.
It reminds me of the George Allen campaign from last year. Allen is a likeable guy, but he hired a campaign staff of cutthroats, who frankly destroyed Allens’ reputation. It seems that in some ways that’s what happened to Romney. He was considered liberal before, but never nasty. Now he’s hated. And I don’t think his own words are the problem, it’s how his campaign operated.
I also think it’s unfair, but it’s real.
Anyway, in the end, I figure if Romney can’t turn this around himself by giving people a reason to vote FOR him, rather than a reason to vote against McCain, then he doesn’t deserve the nomination. Wanting peple to vote for him is all I can do — I can’t make people vote for him. He’s got to make that happen.
Yeah, that too. how much does it suck that the repub nom is almost/just as bad as the dem? I think he’s going to be the nom and I really don’t understand that. He won’t win but even if he does, it barely matters. It’s depressing all around imo. But we still have the mid west, as I like to call all the 2nd A right people - I know it’s just not the mid west but it sure isn’t this area where I’m from.
That is pretty funny. OK, it’s 2008. Maybe I liked 2007 better. I actually think so, so far. :-)
Hope you weren't expecting me to read the rest of the diatribe following your opening.
They just rehashed false, misleading, and out-of-context things from MassResistance.
Too bad, because if they were honest, there are things to be discussed in that record, but we can’t discuss the real issues because it’s easier just to lie about it and make it worse.
The “50 abortion” is where I lost Fred Thompson. Up until that point, I saw him as a man of character who would argue from a solid point of view.
But I know Thompson supports abortion for rape, incest, and to save a mother’s life. I also know he voted for the bill that made payments for abortions for poor people legal.
I know that Thompson would NOT keep poor women who were raped from getting the morning-after pill. In fact, I don’t remember him saying he opposed the morning-after pill for ANYBODY, much less for people who he thought should be allowed to have abortions.
And Thompson, who supports a woman’s right to a post-rape abortion, wouldn’t bar that from poor women by not allowing them to get coverage for that abortion in their health care plan.
But there he was, picking up the partisan hack sound-bite attack on “$50 abortions”, as if the co-pay from an insurance policy is a rational basis to discuss medical costs.
Sorry, I hate the idea that abortion is legal, and that therefore it is covered under medical plans. But it is, and to attack a man for a health plan that had to cover abortions that you think should be legal is simply politics rather than principle.
Did Romney overstate his conservative credentials as Governor — I think so. Was he a liberal? no. But we can’t have that discussion, because there’s only “all” or “nothing”. The man who in 1994 supported an AWB is considered no different than the man who is currently trying to ban handguns. That’s just stupid.
RoeGone at best will help elect McCain, who supports FEDERAL FUNDING of embryonic stem cell research. Now, I’m not for banning the research, but I’m against federal funding. Romney’s against federal funding. If the next president supports funding, we WILL BE FUNDING it.
So why is Roegone supporting a man who will move us BACKWARDS on life issues, and is LESS likely to make Roe “go away”, which is their stated purpose? Why are they spending their money ensuring that the LESSER candidate gets elected?
Because they are a front group for Huckabee, most likely, but in any case are NOT what they seem. If I had a million to spend, I’d run a presidential candidate and have him put abortions on the air as POLITICAL CAMPAIGN COMMERCIALS so they can’t be censored. I’d spend money putting 4-d ultrasound in every inner city, to convince women to not abort their kids.
Instead, they are spending it to derail a pro-life candidate in favor of a man who WILL allow MY TAX MONEY to be spent on killing embryos for research.
I was listening to Fox and Dick Morris said that exit polling showed that the Republican party was moving to the left.
Sorry, I should have said you are being “foolish”. I have no right to call a man a fool. Please accept my apologies.
...rehashed false, misleading, and out-of-context things from MassResistance?
Might as well get it straight from the horse’s mouth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_w9pquznG4
I just wish I could find Mitt Romney trustworthy. About the $50, I read that he wasn’t stating the truth and instead of taking orders from the courts, he gave up authority to a board onto which he appointed someone from Planned Parenthood.
I don’t see how someone can change on so many issues without being able to tell the moral story that has a ring of validity about it. He’s told the story about his change of heart on human life — but I read that the person he was in communication with has a different version.
About the whole set of changes, he seems to merely say, “The older I get the wiser Ronald Reagan becomes.” That just doesn’t provide a meaty enough explanation.
I will take exception to your inclusion of the word "thinking". As a practical matter, many pro-lifers accept the rape and incest exceptions for two reasons -- one, most non-thinking people don't want to "force" women who are pregnant through "no fault of their own" to have babies, and those who know better realise that it's better to ban 950,000 abortions a year than none.
But there is no rational way to justify banning abortion in general, but allowing it for rape and incest.
Abortion is only wrong if you believe the baby is a person. If you don't, there is NO reason not to allow a woman to choose.
But if you believe the baby is a person, what possible justification can be used to kill that person in response to unrelated criminal or non-acceptable activity?
The argument that we should hold the woman "responsible" if it is her fault she is pregnant, but not otherwise, plays into the false claim of pro-abortionists that pro-lifers don't care for the child, but just want to punish women.
First, incest. There was a time when babies born of incestuous relationships were often in severe distress. But nowadays the gene pool is more diluted, AND we have treatments which largely obviate the problems. Further, the relative health of a person is no excuse to kill them. And unless the incest is also rape, the sex act was consensual, so you can't even make the false argument about not punishing the woman. If it's because incest is often with young girls, then why not allow all young girls to get abortions? The incest exception really makes no sense.
The rape exception makes only slighly more sense. You could argue that a mother knowing her baby is the child of an evil man would be traumatized in a way that really costs her her life, in which case you are really arguing "life of the mother". But still, to kill a person just to relieve emotional suffering of another?
No, if you oppose abortion for the right reason, you have to oppose rape and incest exceptions, at least on a PERSONAL level, for those same reasons.
Which means you are back to doing so for political expediency, something I am familiar with but which has some level of disfavor here .
Yes, he was wrong then. He is right now, at least so far as can be told. I do take that on faith, but it is a reasoned faith, not a blind one, based on my experience with people of his faith, people I trust who have counseled with him, and my own prayerful consideration. All of which COULD be wrong, which is why I would prefer to be talking about Fred Thompson, or a Mike Huckabee with Fred Thompson’s views.
Mitt Romney will stand before God one day, and answer for his sins. But that is a moral and theological reckoning, not a political one. I see no value in imposing a moral restitution as a precondition for supporting a candidate for office that is running on MY platform.
As I said, I would LOVE it if he would do so. And it obviously would help him with some of the pro-life movement, and probably wouldn’t hurt him with the non-pro-lifers who he’s already lost because he’s pro-life.
But unless we are talking about Tancredo, Hunter, and I believe Huckabee, NONE of our candidates were pure on abortion, and all would bear that “culpability” you speak of — some maybe slightly less, some maybe more. A doctor who performed abortions? I would require something more from such a person. A man who was NOT in public office making blanket claims of supporting “women’s rights?” That’s not some exceptional sin, it’s actually what you will hear from quite a large segment of the male population.
I make no excuses for Romney’s pro-abortion past. I simply don’t look to replace God as his judge.
You of course have the freedom to reject him for whatever reason, and to express that reason. I simply do not find your argument in this case compelling or helpful to the cause. I do not doubt that you want to be helpful to the cause, or that you don’t firmly believe your position IS helpful — we simply disagree on that point.
If I thought Romney was still anti-life, I wouldn’t be supporting him, much less arguing for him. I could have brought myself to vote for Rudy, but I never would have supported his views on abortion.
Bless yer heart, Jim. I would like to hear any of these guys say, “Yeah, I’ve taken some really freaked-out stances, but then reality knocked me down....”
Article V of the Code of Conduct is very specific in declaring that U.S. military personnel are required to avoid answering questions to the utmost of their ability and to make no oral or written statements disloyal to the United States and its allies or harmful to their cause. Any violation of this code is considered collaborating with the enemy.
And there are stories by fellow POWs in the Hanoi Hilton who were stuck in 4’ x 6’ bamboo cages while McCain was pampered and given special treatment. McCain is ripe for a royal Swift Boating by the DemonRATs. Then McCain’s hero status will drop like a lead balloon as HillBillary or Ossama Obama takes the White House.
Damn is right......this is about enough to put me off politics for the next few years!!
I just hope Romney gives McCain hector in the north and far west, in a week...
...and lays off Huckabee’s south.
Yada yada yada. He’s a liar. A sick abortionist liar.
The “permission” he’s bragging about not changing in this video is a judge’s permission for underage teenage girls to murder their unborn children. He’s bragging about “preserving and protecting” a woman’s “right” to slaughter the helpless unborn child in her womb:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_w9pquznG4
He’s one sick puppy.
Fred’s voting record is nearly 100% pro-life, except for his vote on a bill that by necessity, and maybe against his desire, had funding. That’s his voting record. But his POSITION is not 100% pro-life even today (neither is Romney’s), because he has the rape-incest exception.
And in 1994, Thompson SAID things that supported a woman’s right to choose, up until a certain point in her pregnancy, and he’s had to express his changed opinion on that. His statements were not nearly as bad as Romney’s but when we are talking about purity he was not pure.
I don’t think I could say I have no doubts about anybody’s character except my own. And I KNOW my character is flawed. I do NOT think that Romney and Thompson are much different at this point on their “character” regarding abortion. Both have an emotionally correct aura, but fail the intellectual test — neither has a position that is grounded on the fact of the personhood of a fetus — because nobody who is certain of a baby’s personhood could support killing the baby because of the method of conception.
But Fred was in fact more acceptable to me on this issue, and on most every issue, than Romney. I use Thompson to indicate my frustration at the “nuanced” approach to the purity argument. I’ve had my personal pro-life VIEWS questioned by people supporting a man who allows for abortions for rape and incest, because I support a man who SAYS he has the same position. I may be stupid, but my support is based on that stupidity, not a secret desire for abortion, and the charge is ludicrous.
Would I like to support a 100% pro-life candidate? Sure. I’m not sure we have one. We have some “pro-life” candidates, Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee to name two. Hunter, Tancredo were two more, and stronger on the issue than Thompson.
I hate that I had to support a man who as recently as 2002 was still stating support for the “woman’s right to choose”. That’s not an easy position to take. But no man who was better showed any ability to do what it takes to get votes. I donated to a couple of them, and worked for one of them. But in my opinion, if you trust that Romney is not lying now, I will not hold his past against him for purposes of an election, especially since he DOES acknowledge that his previous position was WRONG.
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.