Posted on 02/14/2012 10:55:19 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Thanks to an NYT story this weekend, this bit of old news has been resurrected, showcased yesterday in a Peter Robinson post at Ricochet and then picked up by Rush Limbaugh this afternoon. The key quote is six years old and appeared in a story in National Review so it’s been on the right’s radar since well before Romney’s first presidential run. And yet, much like the mandate, somehow he didn’t get much grief over it last time when he was running as the conservative in the race.
Mr. Romney’s transformation on abortion is, in some respects, the story of a man who entered public life in a state whose politics did not match his own. [Story of his life. -- AP] People close to Mr. Romney say they have no doubt that he opposes terminating a pregnancy. Critics and even some supporters say there is also little question that he did what he had to do to get elected as governor.
“He was always uncomfortable on the issue, but he was penned in by having run as a pro-choice candidate in 1994 and by the political realities of Massachusetts in 2002,” said Rob Gray, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney’s campaign for governor. “It was made clear to him by advisers early on in his gubernatorial race that he had to be pro-choice, and he could not show any hesitation.”…
In 2002, as a candidate for governor, Mr. Romney filled out a questionnaire for Planned Parenthood declaring that he supported “the substance” of the Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark abortion rights decision, Roe v. Wade. Six weeks before he was elected, he sat for an hourlong interview with state officials of the advocacy group now known as Naral Pro-Choice America…
By 2005, with Mr. Romney eyeing a possible presidential bid, he began to distance himself from his abortion rights platform. “My political philosophy is pro-life,” he told National Review, a conservative magazine, in an article that June. That same article quoted his top strategist at the time, Mike Murphy, as saying Mr. Romney had been “a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly.”
I get the sense sometimes from Romney’s critics that they think he was pro-choice his whole life and then cynically flipped to pro-life in 2005 once he had decided to run for president. Nuh uh. Revisit this Times piece from last October describing his days as a Mormon leader in Boston in the 1980s and 1990s. Allegedly he once advised a woman against having an abortion even though her doctors had recommended it after discovering a dangerous blood clot. Assuming that’s true, he obviously took life in the womb very, very seriously. But … that only makes his “pro-choice friendly” attitude as governor worse, doesn’t it? Conservatives can, I think, happily accept former pro-choicers who’ve had a moral awakening about abortion. People do change their minds. I think they’d also tolerate (but not embrace) someone whom they suspected of being secretly pro-choice so long as he/she is committed to governing as pro-life. Romney falls into that category for many of his critics, I suspect. Even if you think he’s telling you what you want to hear on this issue, it’s inconceivable to me that he’d flip on the issue once in office. The betrayal would be cataclysmic, and he knows it. He’d be true blue pro-life to preserve his political viability, if nothing else.
But what about someone who’s been secretly pro-life all along yet who … tolerated abortion in the name of getting elected? Where does that person fall on the moral spectrum? This isn’t any ordinary issue that can be triangulated as necessary. To devout pro-lifers like Huckabee, abortion is a moral evil on the order of slavery. You can’t be “slavery-friendly” or “personally anti-slavery but politically pro-choice.” If you believe the practice is irredeemably, grievously wrong, you’re obliged morally to try to change the policy that enables it. So I wonder: Would it be better if Mitt had briefly but sincerely become pro-choice — or “pro-choice friendly” — while running in Massachusetts and then flipped, or if he’d never been pro-choice but had been willing to look the other way at abortion in the interest of his own political viability? It’s the difference between losing your moral bearings and selling them out. Which is worse?
“But what about someone who’s been secretly pro-life all along yet who … tolerated abortion in the name of getting elected? Where does that person fall on the moral spectrum?”
Falls on the spectrum somewhere around “lying, deceiving politically motivated, non-backbone personage”?
Romney’s Motto “ Say whatever it takes.”
“First of all, it's not worth getting angry about.”
- Mitt Romney
Mr. niteowl77
I have been perfectly consistent - that is I have consistently been a politician.
It could be that Mitt just rolled over on this issue to keep the peace at home. If that is the case though, we don't want to elect his wife by proxy.....we've been there - done that with the Clintons.
Willard Mitt Romney has been pro-abortion since he was a teenager when his aunt died during an illegal abortion...
In 1970 he supported his mother Lenore Romney when she ran for US senate from MI on a pro-abortion platform...THREE years before Roe V Wade...
In 2008 he announced during a debate that he was “proud” of his mother for her pro-abortion stance...
In 1994 he ran left of Teddy Kennedy demanding to be recognized as the more pro-abortion candidate during the US Senate race from MASS
In 2002 her ran for MASS Gov demanding to be recognized as the more pro-abortion candidate...
Life long pro-abortion...
If I could be assured that his stance on all the issues would be "right", then I'd vote for him even if he was a slimy flip-flopper who said whatever it took to get elected. The problem is obtaining that degree of assurance is impossible.
Well, because of that, I can't support him in the primary. However (and I've said it before), the chance of him undoing ObamaCare, appointing conservative justices, etc., is surely better than that of Obama doing the same. Romney is a "may screw us over", but Obama is "definitely will screw us over."
It is difficult to tell what Romney’s true belief is. Regardless, Santorum is a better candidate. Santorum 2012
That was a Mormon woman, he was a Mormon Bishop.
Romney as a politician is pro-abortion for society at large, he is not pro-abortion for the females within his cult.
It’s kinda like the mainstream Mormon position against polygamy. They started out firmly against it, then embraced it, and now are kinda against it for political reasons, but still admit the principle which they believe will be practiced in their afterlife, while praising through faint dams Mormon fundamentalists who still practice polygamy. Thus Romney’s flip-flop over abortion makes sense in this context.
Even John McCain voted her down.
If Obama's first Supreme Court pick is who Santorum believed was fit for our high courts, what's that say about his true values?
Although no man can read another’s mind, I believe that it’s a mistake to try and understand Romney’s beliefs in terms of pro-life, pro-choice or pro-abortion. To truly understand Romney, I believe, one has to look at the one cornerstone in Romney’s life, the one thing that has remained consistent despite his many political adventures and flip-flops. That’s his Mormonism.
In other words, Romney’s guiding force seems to be the belief he’s the fulfillment of Joseph Smith Jr’s so-called “White Horse Prophecy”.
P.S. Joseph Smith Jr’s so-called White Horse Prophecy is also the reason I believe the Romney camp has been unable to provide the conservative base with a compelling reason for Romney’s presidential campaign. There has reportedly been speculation of Romney being the fulfillment of this prophecy since his student days at BYU. But of course, if this were ever disseminated to the general public....
The WHITE Horse Prophecy discussion should fit in just fine on the Sunday talk shows as they are discussing this.
I wonder if at some opportune point in Romney’s campaigning, that black leaders might come up with an organized demand for Mormons to cease baptizing dead blacks, a very public, national campaign, which might lead to some interesting TV discussions and questioning?
Remember that Romney is a Mormon Bishop, and was performing this sick ritual on dead blacks, and even dead black Muslims while teaching that blacks were inferior, Martin Luther King Mormon? Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman?
At least I’m assuming that they baptized dead black people.
I think this is a question for Colofornian. Would LDS baptize dead black people?
I thought blacks were considered the descendants of those souls that remained neutral during the war in heaven between warring spirits, and thus blacks were barred from the highest levels of heaven, which is why they were barred from the Mormon priesthood for so long. So would they need proxy baptism?
But then again, that all changed through sudden revelation.
what’s your point; Harry Reid’s Mormon. That doesn’t say much.
Very appropo comparison...well stated.
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