Posted on 01/07/2008 6:18:49 AM PST by xzins
Is Mitt Romney Conservative?
by Gary Glenn Chairman, Campaign for Michigan Families
The Washington, D.C. conservative weekly Human Events last year listed Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in its Top Ten list of RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), ranking him at number 8 in the nation with the following entry:
"Has said, I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. Supports (homosexual) civil unions and stringent gun laws. After visiting Houston, he criticized the citys aesthetics, saying, This is what happens when you dont have zoning." (Human Events)
Romney should have ranked even higher on the list of RINOs. He famously likes to tell conservative audiences in Iowa and South Carolina that being a conservative Republican in Massachusetts is like being a cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention.
I attended last falls GOP conference in Michigan, where Romney continued his masquerade as a "conservative," even daring to tell the assembled activists: "I am pro-life" -- knowing full well that he does not mean by that term what those listening would think he meant.
Romneys ten-year political career has occurred from his late 40s to his late 50s, yet he asks pro-family conservatives to naively believe that hes just now figuring out his core beliefs.
During that decade, he has insistently supported legal abortion-on-demand. In a televised 1994 campaign debate, Romney said: "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. I have since the time when my Mom took that position when she ran in 1970 as a U.S. Senate candidate. I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years that we should sustain and support it, and I sustain and support that law and the right of a woman to make that choice. ...Since that time, my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter, and you will not see my wavering on that." (Boston Globe)
His 2002 gubernatorial campaign web site stated: "As Governor, Mitt Romney would protect the current pro-choice status quo in Massachusetts. No law would change. The choice to have an abortion is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the governments." (Archive)
Romneys response to the National Abortion Rights Action Leagues 2002 candidate survery: I respect and will protect a womans right to choose. This choice is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not mine and not the governments. The truth is, no candidate in the governors race in either party would deny women abortion rights." (Notably, Romney refused to answer Massachusetts Citizens for Lifes candidate questionnaire.) (Boston Globe)
Not surprisingly, Romneys clearly stated support for Roe and "a womans right to choose" -- i.e., abortion on demand -- earned him the endorsement of the pro-abortion Republican Majority for Choice PAC.
He was also endorsed, twice, by the homosexual "Log Cabin Republicans," the same group that in 2004 spent $1 million attacking President Bush for his support of a Marriage Protection Amendment.
Romney believes the Boy Scouts should allow openly homosexual Scoutmasters: "I feel that all people should be allowed to participate in the Boy Scouts regardless of their sexual orientation." (Web today)
He endorses Ted Kennedys federal "gay rights" legislation. He endorses taxpayer-financed same-sex benefits for the homosexual partners of state employees, and even attacked some Democratic legislators for not supporting such government benefits.
According to the Associated Press, he has appointed at least two openly homosexual lawyers to state judgeships, one a board member of the Lesbian & Gay Bar Association. Imagine how that will fly in Republican presidential primaries in the South, the prospect of a president with a record of appointing homosexual activists to the bench. (See copy of gubernatorial news release below.)
In 2002, before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalized so-called homosexual "marriage," Romney denounced a preemptive state Marriage Protection Amendment prohibiting homosexual "marriage," civil unions, or same-sex public employee benefits as "too extreme," even after being advised by the media that his own wife and son had just signed a petition to place it on the ballot. (Boston Phoenix)
Now, as he postures to run for president, Romney travels to Iowa and Michigan and South Carolina to claim hes "pro-life" and brag about fighting homosexual "marriage," saying that at age 59, his position on such issues has "evolved."
(No flip-flop so far, however, on his stated support for homosexual Scoutmasters, forcing taxpayers to fund spousal benefits for the "partners" of state employees involved in homosexual relationships, or Kennedys federal "gay rights" legislation.)
Regardless, most pro-family voters dont believe in the theory of evolution -- including as it applies to politicians, and especially when the alleged "evolution" seems so conveniently timed to produce political benefit.
Gov. Romney can tell all the cattle-rancher-at-a-vegetarian-convention jokes he wants about Massachusetts. But theyre going to fall flat when social conservatives learn -- and they will -- that his long-term record on abortion and elements of homosexual activists political agenda has been that of Vegetarian in Chief.
Mitt romney opposes amnesty for illegals. And he didn’t hire illegals, he contracted services with an American company run by a legal resident who then hired illegals to perform those services.
Curse all those Freepers for supporting people who never supported the NAMBLA agenda over those who claim they don't anymore. How unreasonable we all are.
There is a reason why a lot of people won't vote for Rudy or Mitt under any circumstances Buford. We believe in moral absolutes. I don't think you're walking tall.
So it’s Mitt Romney and NAMBLA now? Oh you got me with that one.
“Gun-grabbing, abortion, and gay rights” never even came up during the debate last night (luckily for Rudy and Mitt)!!
“Gays serve in the military. I hope that doesnt make your head explode. The official policy of the military, which is supported by conservative stalwarts such as Duncan Hunter, is that gays can serve in the military so long as they keep quiet about it.”
No, Charles, you’re the one who doesn’t understand.
My husband served as a Navy pilot for 26 years; I was with him all the way. He served on ships that had very close quarters.
Would you just stop and think a minute what “Don’t ask, don’t tell” means?
It means that it’s just fine for a gay person to serve, as long as he/she does not act on his/her impulses. The welcome mat is out.
Acting out equals “telling,” and that person is then out of the service.
Eliminating age of consent laws that forbid adults having sex with children.
Sorry you didn't know the answer to our question, or understand that people other than yourself, apparently, consider this unacceptable under any circumstance.
Thank you for playing, don't come back tomorrow.
Thanks for that. Thats a biggie!
I support gays in the military the day their proponents support me bunking and showering with their athletic 18 & 19 year old daughters at school. Just apply forced nudity among vulnerable teens around the predatorily male sex drive equally. Thats all I ask.
It was just 1994. It was also 2002. And you don’t just get endorsed by LCR, you apply and qualify for it. The endorsement comes with a contract that has to be signed. Has Romney renounced his membership?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1946293/posts?page=5#5
Contract is linked here for review.
It was just 1994. = It wasn’t just 1994.
He will not be less Conservative that the other 'front-runner's; and he just may be more; in fact.
I never forgave George Romney for killing the Nash and the Hudson.
1957 Nash Ambassador
1957 Hudson Hornet
I would love one of those!
Sorry you didn't know the answer to our question, or understand that people other than yourself, apparently, consider this unacceptable under any circumstance.
Thank you for playing, don't come back tomorrow.
Before we continue you mind taking a dump so that you refrain from attributing things to me that are false? Provide citations to your absurd assertations preferrably from sources other than the Romney-deranged MassResistance.
Counter campaigning for 2008 does not mean he wasn’t endorsed in 1994 AND 2002. There are a number of Log Cabin Republicans running this year. They can only endorse one. Counter campaigning also DOES NOT mean he is no longer a member.
Log Cabin Republicans are politically and financially alligned with StonewallVets.
Power Point of this brochure can be downloaded here
About StonwallVets:
HARRY HAYon MAN/BOY LOVE
The speeches that Harry Hay made at meetings in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles in the 1980s and in New York in June 1994 during Stonewall 25, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots that launched the modern-day gay liberation movement, are published here for the first time.
Harry, founder in 1950 of the first American gay group to survive, the Mattachine Society, cofounder of the Gay Liberation Front, Southern California chapter, in 1969, cofounder of the Radical Faeries in 1979, father of the U.S. gay movement, and grandfatherly icon of gay liberation, died on October 24, 2002, at the age of ninety. Harry was a vocal and courageous supporter of NAMBLA and intergenerational sexual relationships, though since his death many of the assimilationists in the gay and lesbian movement, including its most prominent organizations, have already sought to erase that part of his radicalism (not to mention his Communist roots and vocal critiques of their own accommodationist approach to the powers that be). In order to bring truth to the record, I have transcribed these comments.
I first met Harry in early 1983, at the time of the first of these speeches. I was introduced to him and his lovelyI almost said saintlycompanion, John Burnside, a lovable gay man if ever there was one, by lesbian activist, self-professed witch, and sometime weed partner Katherine Davenport, a mutual friend and journalist for the New York Native. I knew about Harrys past as a Communist and labor activist, as well as the central role he had played in efforts to launch a gay movement in the dreary, conformist 1950sa time when homosexuality was still totally medicalized as a sickness or excoriated as a satanic perversion. I also knew that he had developed a philosophy of same-sex love that seemed inspired by the writings of Edward Carpenter, though without the explicit intermediate sex or third sex baggage, yet retaining a hint of the idea that gay men were destined to lead society to a higher level of sexual freedom and social justice.
When I was president of New Yorks Gay Activists Alliance in 1975, we received a letter from Harry from Taos, where he was then living, in which he expounded his ideas, with lots of capital letters and, to me, rather strange formulations. I was excited, because I hadnt realized that he was still alive, since he had remained largely silent so far as gay issues were concerned since he was driven out of Mattachine for his radicalism. So when I met him in 1983, I prepared a lavish turkey dinner for him, John, and Katherine.
From then on, I considered him a friend. I was lucky to have spent more time with him than I could have hoped for, yet far less than I would have likedat Phil Willkies Wisconsin cabin and his St. Paul apartment; at the Stonewall 25 demonstration in New York in 1994, where Harry and John, as well as the late Jim Kepner (another early member of the Mattachine Society and a gay archivist) marched with the Spirit of Stonewall contingent that included NAMBLA; and at the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) conference in New York that same week, which expelled NAMBLA (despite Harrys vocal protests and subsequent disgust) under pressure from U.S. Senator Jesse Helms, the Clinton administration, gay congressman Barney Frank, and the gay and lesbian assimilationist organizations; at his and Johns apartment in San Francisco; at a Faerie event in Stuyvesant Square Park in New York; at several NAMBLA conferences
When I learned last September that Harry had inoperable cancer and only weeks to live, I wrote him a card that ended with a thought that expresses an appreciation for his life that I am sure many others would share: You are leaving the world an unforgettable legacy, and will be an eternal part of our gay Pantheon, along with Ulrichs, Carpenter, and Whitman.
Of course, Harry stood for much more than the comments published here. But these views were also important to him, as his moving expressions of love for Matt, the man in his life as a boy, make clear. Wherever he is, I thank him for them, and offer them to posterity.
David Thorstad.
Cleanup on aisle 48!!
“Thompson didn’t want to stop companies from hiring illegals.”
In the interest of full disclosure I favor Hunter and Thompson. I prefer Romney over Huckabee and McCain. I just don't care for all the self-destructive cannibalism going on on FR. Especially if the field gets whittled down to Huck, McCain, and Romney.
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