Posted on 04/05/2007 7:43:42 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
INDIANAPOLIS - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is taking a second shot at describing his hunting experience.
The former Massachusetts governor has called himself a lifelong hunter, yet his campaign acknowledged that he has been on just two hunting trips — one when he was 15 and the other just last year.
Campaigning in Indianapolis on Thursday, Romney said he has hunted small game since his youth.
"I'm not a big-game hunter. I've made that very clear," he said. "I've always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will. I began when I was 15 or so and I have hunted those kinds of varmints since then. More than two times."
In Keene, N.H., on Tuesday, Romney had said: "I purchased a gun when I was a young man. I've been a hunter pretty much all my life." The next day, the campaign said Romney hunted rabbits in Idaho with cousins as a teenager and shot quail with GOP donors at a game preserve in Georgia in 2006.
Campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said Wednesday that Romney wasn't trying to mislead anyone, and he promoted Romney's support of gun-ownership rights.
Romney has also supported gun control. When he ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1994 he backed the Brady law and a ban on assault-style rifles. As governor, he supported the state's strict gun-control laws and signed into law one of the nation's tougher assault weapons laws.
He joined the National Rifle Association last August as a "Lifetime" member.
While Mr. Romney is not my first choice to be the Republican nominee, I see good in him and am not criticizing you for supporting him. I could see myself voting for him when the primaries come to my state if my first choice candidate is out of the race at that time. However, assault weapons bans are wrong and stupid, and supporting the candidate shouldn't mean trying to justify or rationalize everything that he's done. My first choice is Duncan Hunter, but I have problems with his vote for Sarbanes-Oxley. Even if I end up voting for Mr. Romney, I'll feel ashamed that we've reached a point of having to support someone who supported an assault weapons ban. Even now, I'm ashamed that President Bush supported that nonsense.
Bill
Whoops!
LOL...you guys are amazing. You’re putting me on trial instead of Mitt Romney. You’d think I was running for President.
I’d a stayed out of it if you hadn’t started pontificating in #132.
Yeah, sure.
Where can I get me a huntin’ license? LOL
Some of what Mitt acompolished in Mass. Also visit unmarkedpackage’s home page, at the link. He can also put you on a ping list for Mitt, if you desire.
He balanced the budget with no new taxes.
-He was instrumental in passing a bill abolishing a retroactive capital gains tax in the state that would have forced nearly 50,000 taxpayers to pay an additional $200 million in state taxes and fees.
-He knows how to use the veto pen.
-He vetoed the bill providing state funding for human embryonic stem cell research
- He vetoed a bill that provided for the “morning after pill” without a prescription because it is an abortifacient and would have been available to minors without parental notification and consent
- He vetoed legislation which would have redefined Massachusetts longstanding definition of the beginning of human life from fertilization to implantation
- He supported parental notification laws and opposed efforts to weaken parental involvement
- He fought to promote abstinence education in public school classrooms with a program offered by faith-based Boston group Healthy Futures to middle school students.
-Mitt Romney opposed a bill that would have allowed illegal aliens to get driver’s licenses.
- Romney vetoed a bill in 2004 that would have given illegal aliens the right to in-state tuition at public universities.
Filed comprehensive healthcare legislation to provide private high quality, affordable health insurance to all Massachusetts citizens. Currently in a legislative conference committee.
For third year in a row, filed and signed into law a balanced, on-time budget that did not raise taxes.
Proposed and signed “Melanie’s Law,” a tough new drunk driving law that stiffened penalties on drunk drivers and closed legal loopholes that allowed repeat offenders to get behind the wheel.
Filed and signed into law the most significant expansion of military benefits in recent years. The new law reduced to zero the cost members of the Massachusetts National Guard must pay to attend public colleges and universities, increased twenty-fold the death benefit paid to families of members killed in the line of duty, created a new annuity benefit for Gold Star spouses and boosted the amount paid to Gold Star parents.
Convinced the Legislature to abolish a retroactive capital gains tax that would have unjustly forced nearly 50,000 taxpayers to pay additional taxes and fees on transactions that occurred more than three years earlier.
Filed and signed into law property tax relief for senior citizens, helping them to stay in their homes longer.
Proposed and approved a law extending death benefits to the families of volunteer and part-time public safety officers who die in the line of duty.
Signed energy legislation to soften the impact of high home heating costs on low income residents. The law also enabled income-eligible taxpayers to apply for income tax deductions for home heating costs and provided incentives for individuals and businesses to undertake upgrades that promote energy efficiency.
Successfully argued against legislation to provide tuition breaks for illegal aliens.
He did pretty well in a true blue state.
More on Romney here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/~unmarkedpackage/#abortion
To a certain degree, I agree with you, but some of the stuff on the streets these days is most certainly not what the founders intended when they spoke of the right to keep and bear arms. Even to protect our very lives, some of that stuff is just dumb. Making a choice for POTUS based on this issue alone is not worth all the fuss, but that’s just me.
Well said, Bill. It's the fundamental things that bug me, like the state-mandated health insurance plan he put into place in Massachuests, the confusing of 2nd amendment roots with hunting, the caving to harmful popular movements like Gay Youth Pride Day. I mean, isn't that the kind of wimpy indulgence that is an oxymoron to a person who could really "get" the WOT?
It was Shelbey Steele, I think, who wrote in a recent Hoover Digest the idea that "victory" has to be defined. (Maybe it was Thomas Sowell). I'd like a candidate to define "victory" in the WOT.
OK, screw this guy, I ain’t voting for him.
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