Posted on 04/04/2008 6:39:47 PM PDT by neverdem
Social Conservatives Warn against Romney as McCain's VP
By Penny Starr
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
April 04, 2008
(CNSNews.com) - In a full-page letter ad that will run Saturday in an Arizona newspaper where Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will be on the presidential campaign trail, leading social conservatives warn the GOP hopeful against picking Mitt Romney as his vice presidential running mate. 
"I know (Romney) to be a very dangerous and deceitful person," Gregg Jackson told Cybercast News Service about his reasons for helping draft and signing the open-letter style ad.
"He's the only one to establish abortion on demand for $50 as part of his very own socialist health care plan," Jackson said, referring to the plan put into place in Massachusetts when Romney was governor of the state.
Jackson, author of "Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies" and a talk show host on WRKO in Boston, said Romney is the most liberal of all the presidential candidates, including Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Conservative activist Paul Weyrich, who supported Romney when he was in the presidential race, also signed the letter.
"We were very grateful when (Weyrich) came to see the light," Peter LaBarbera, founder of Republicans for Family Values and president of Americans for Truth, told Cybercast News Service.
LaBarbera and Jackson joined 24 others in signing the letter, a group that also included J. Matt Barber of Concerned Women for America and William J. Murray of the Religious Freedom Coalition.
LaBarbera said social conservatives want McCain to nominate "somebody that has solid pro-family and pro-life credentials."
Jackson said he had no doubts about the significance of McCain's VP choice.
"(McCain) will not win unless he can effectively mobilize and energize the GOP base, euphemistically called 'value voters' or Evangelical Christians," Jackson said. "There are 40 million of us, and I say, 'Hey Pal, if you want my vote, you'd better pick an authentically conservative running mate.'
"We don't want Hillary Clinton dressed up in a Reagan suit," he added.
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“many people love Ronald Reagan’s legacy...and I do, too...and yet, if the same standard were applied to Reagan that is now being put upon Mitt, they would *hate* Ronald Reagan, because he appointed two pro-abortion Supreme Court justices: O’Connor and Kennedy.”
Appointing Supreme Court judges seems to a bit of a crap shoot, but these were republicans, and those choices were made 20 plus years ago.
I don’t know how liberal Romney’s judges are, but we do know that only 1 out of 4 of them are even registered republican, if that tells you anything.
Until he embarked on this national campaign there was no hint in Romney’s first 57 years that he was any kind of a conservative warrior that was eager to lead the right wing of America, in fact we see the very opposite.
Until this current campaign strategy was embarked on, we see a man who’s only passionate utterings were the passions of a liberal, proud to reject Goldwater, refusing to register republican under president Reagan, taking a stand against the Contract with America, his most passionate recorded moments were his sincere defense of abortion based on his claim that without it women die and Gay Power, including fully opening up the military to them.
When his life is compared to his recent total conversion, the conversion doesn’t seem real, he doesn’t really own guns, he had never been a member of the NRA until this election, when all of a sudden only a lifetime membership would suffice, he isn’t credible when he now says that ‘he longed to serve in Vietnam’, especially when he thinks that his squad of military aged boys working for his desires is equal to serving our nations war effort that he suddenly wants to lead.
Even the abortion conversion doesn’t hold up when the witnesses say that the already lame event that he describes as the epiphany causing event didn’t even happen, his wife at the same time went from handling the pro abortion elements of his political campaigns to handling his pro life elements of this new campaign, her epiphany has never been explained or even questioned.
During the primary people were confused, but now it is time to put Romney on the back of the stove and let him earn some street creds to back up this ‘new man’, and it would be nice if he would earn some of those battle scars while serving in an elected office somewhere like governor, or senator.
This tiny little resume of a weak one term governor with no reelection, followed by a 100 million dollar national ad campaign, both largely purchased with his own money is a little too thin to make him the star of our right wing dreams for the future.
Back in the 1980's, the MA Supreme Judicial Court (henceforth "MA SJC") ruled that no government healthcare subsidy for the poor could exclude "medically necessary" abortions. As with SCOTUS, the MA court later deemed abortions for "mental health" reasons as medically necessary, which in effect means an abortion for any reason has to be covered by any state government healthcare program.
As a result, Medicaid in Massachusetts must cover abortions. This was true before Romney came into power, and it did not change with his healthcare plan. Women on medicade always did and continue to get abortions in Massachusetts. Romney didn't change this.
Now part of Romney's new healthcare plan was to provide a sliding subsidy to purchase PRIVATE health insurance for people who are too rich to qualify for medicade but to poor (within 300% of the poverty line) to afford insurance on their own. After the plan was signed into law, the state insurance commission, because of the past SJC decision mentioned above, determined that all subsidized health insurance plans had to include abortion coverage.
So it is true that after Romney's healthcare plan went into effect, a small number of women who previously did not have access to subsidized abortions now have it. But this number is quite small: it's limited to those who have incomes less than 31,000 of the poverty line and who don't qualify for medicade. I ran the numbers and it comes to something like 2% of the female population in the state. So yes, after the healthcare plan passed, the number of women eligible subsidized abortions increased, but by very, very little.
Some Freepers have presented this as if every woman in Massachusetts has access to $50 abortions. This is simply not true. Again, the program only applies to that very small number of women who make less than $31,000 per year but who are also too rich to qualify for medicade.
And, BTW, it's not as if the taxpayers pick up all the the rest of the tab for the abortion. The health insurance premiums are subsidized, but not completely. Someone making 31,000 is going to be paying over half of the premium. Someone making $20,000 will obviously be paying less.
Now consider this. The subsidized insurance plan requires a copay of $50. An abortion typically costs around $200. So a woman who qualifies for this subsidy is going to save $150 on her abortion. Do you really think $150 is going to make or break a woman's decision of whether to have an abortion? Remember, we're talking about women making around $25,000-$31,000 per year. Considering the huge costs associated with having a child, $150 is peanuts, even for someone at that low income level. Hence I seriously doubt this subsidy is going to cause any abortions that wouldn't have happened anyway.
Finally, this provision is NOT in the legislation Romney signed. It was later added by the state insurance commission in order to comply with the past SJC decision.
"$50 abortions" makes for a nice soundbite, but it really amounts to very little in terms of substance.
Another thing I really don't get: Thompson was openly pro-abortion when ran for Senate the first time. Why don't we hear anyone accusing him of flip-flopping?
Oh well, the primary is over, and I seriously doubt Mitt even wants to Veep spot. So really all of this is a big waste of time. Have a nice weekend!
I appreciate your work on the question.
I do hope Mitt stays active...his talents are incredible, I hope he doesn't fade from the marketplace. :)
RD
I can't hold the judge thing against him. For God's sake, he was in MASSACHUSETTS. The fact he could get ANY Republican judges approved is miraculous. :)
And we shouldn't condemn him for putting his own money behind a campaign, should we? To me, that says a lot.
Thanks for the dialouge. I hope we see more of Mitt and a more conservative Republican party in the coming years.
Who the hell knows? Maybe the party's leaders in the Congress and at the grass roots can force a President McCain to drift to the right a bit more. :)
P.S. did you see post 62? it explains the $50 abortion rhetoric pretty thouroughly.
RD
“And we shouldn’t condemn him for putting his own money behind a campaign, should we? To me, that says a lot.”
In Romney’s case without spending his personal money, he would not exist, Romney spent 7 million dollars of his own money trying to win a senate seat, making it the second most expensive election of 1994.
In 2002 he spent a record breaking 6.3 million dollars of his own money to win a %50 victory to replace a republican governor and served an uninspired single term that resulted in the loss of the governorship to a democrat.
In this election he spent another record breaking 45 million dollars of his personal money to convince us that he was a totally different person than the Romney on the youtube. His money could not overcome a pool of challengers that spent almost nothing.
In Romney’s case money seems to be the sole explanation for his even having any role at all in the political world, he really has no identification with anything that has been going on in conservative politics for the last 30 years.
Although he is the 60 year old son of a powerful political family, with a father that ran for president, and a mother that ran for the senate, his own political identity rests solely on whatever advertising campaign that he is purchasing at the time, and with very little real world success in spite of all of that incredible spending over a period of 15 years.
I’ll consider your points. But I don’t disrespect the man’s achievments or denigrate him for believeing enough in himself to spend his own treasure to be a leader.
“But I don’t disrespect the man’s achievments or denigrate him for believeing enough in himself to spend his own treasure to be a leader.”
My point was that he spends his own money because he has to, it was the only way to overcome being an empty suit politically.
Without his own money we would never have heard of him politically, for most successful politicians not having to pay your own way is part of the vetting process to show that you are what you think you are, a leader with a message and a common goal with a constituency that desires what you offer.
I think what you’re saying is only partially true. Lots of successful pols have had the cash to prime the pump.
Mitt also stated he had RAISED the most money of any of his Republican opponents, too...so he might have spent it, but he also received it.
You clearly have your man chosen, I’ll hope for someone to the right of Mitt Romney.
The idea has been expressed here on FR before- It's not my original concept. There are a few other ideas, such as rotating schedules, and sectioning off areas of the country. The only problem is that primary schedules are set by individual states.
Actually, the only way I WILL vote for McCain is if he selects Romney for VP.
Other than that, McCain can go pound sand.
I will volunteer for the down office candidates, but I already told my county GOP committee that I will not hand out literature or go door to door if McCain’s name is connected.
The irony of ironies in this 2008 election season is that many “conservative” Republicans inexplicably morphed into a blind hate against a good and decent conservative man like Romney......
just as many liberal Democrats in the Clinton wing of the party similarly have come out of their bigoted closet of hate in their refusing to support a black candidate in Malcom X Obama.
Two choices.
They have played those two out-of-context snippets of YouTube anti-Romney clips so many times they believe the baloney that Mitt Romney is a lib .....
Or they hate Mormons....
Ironically, these same "conservatives" have no problem when their favorite Republican "conservative" candidate votes year after year to give money to Planned Parenthood, which simply uses trickery of accounting to use that taxpayer funding to conduct abortions.
It is sickening that so many conservatives here on FR, who I used to believe were logical and principaled, could be so venemous towards a good and decent man like Romney who had the courage to proclaim his mistake of the past.
Fox News just reported the same thing.
Which is why I will never ever support anything remotely connected with Hucklebee, who by the standards of good and decent conservatism, is a religious bigoted lout of the highest order.
And I am a devout Baptist who goes to church whenever the church doors are open....Sunday morning (going in about 10 minutes in fact).....Sunday night.
Wednesday prayer meeting. Vacation Bible School. Revivals, etc.
Romney would seal Republican wins in Michigan, Colorado, and would also put Republican ticket in play in numerous other purple states...
Romney was a victim of two or three things in the primaries: early voting (thousands of votes in Florida went to Thompson, who had dropped out....and the rabid anti Mormon wing of the southern Baptists)
I heard that Hucksterbee was behind this, in which I would file this under "religous bigotry". Its a shame we on the right are doing this.
For the record, I don't trust Mitt because he is full of **it and talks out of his a$$.
Hey, look, I’ll be happy with anyone to the right of McCain. :)
I don’t have to have Romney on the ticket to vote for McCain. But if McCain picks someone to the LEFT of himself...someone like Crist, or Snowe, or LIEberman, I’ll have big time serious doubts about voting at all.
“Hey, look, I’ll be happy with anyone to the right of McCain. :)”
I know how low the bar is for you, I have been reading your posts.
for example: “I can’t hold the judge thing against him. For God’s sake, he was in MASSACHUSETTS.”
I wouldn’t say my bar is “low”, I’d say I deal with the truth that politics is the art of the possible.
If you truly read my posts, you would know I am a strong conservative in my ideology.
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