Posted on 10/12/2011 1:01:47 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
In 2003, Romney chose a hard core environmental activist to be Secretary of Commonwealth Development. In this position he was charged with developing a scheme to restrict “greenhouse gas” emissions.
See, we don’t need to vote against Romney because of his religion. I don’t know where the MSM gets their ideas.
The 2008 US presidential election is still more than a year away and it's still way, way too early to predict what's going to happen (ask Howard Dean), but the general outlines of the situation are starting to come together. Mitt Romney won the Iowa Republican straw poll this past weekend. He's leading the polls in New Hampshire. And nationally, he's slowly moving up (though Giuliani is leading the pack).
So, there's a little bit of a Mitt moment going on. Let's take a look at where Romney stands on stem cell research and, by extension, abortion. Much has been made of Romney's "conversion" already, but there's an interesting story that goes along with his positions. And it's worth the attention if he ends up as one of the main players on the Republican side.
Romney has very publicly changed his position on abortion. In his successful run for the governorship of Massachusetts in 2002, Romney pledged that he was a supporter of abortion rights. But Romney says he changed his mind during the last few years -- and it was a visit with Harvard stem cell researcher Douglas Melton that pushed him in the opposite direction. Romney talked about the meeting last year on Charlie Rose (quote starts at 14:00):
"I sat down with a researcher. And he said, "Look, you don't have to think about stem cell research as a moral issue because we kill the embryos after 14 days."
"And I, that struck me, as he said that. And I thought, 'Is that the extent to which we've cheapened life? Has the Roe v. Wade process and approach so cheapened life that we think about killing embryos without batting an eye?'"
"And I recognized that I could no longer stand in the posture of saying, look, I personally oppose, but but I'm not going to change the law."
The Boston Globe followed up with Melton about this meeting, and here's what Melton told the Globe in a statement:
"Governor Romney has mischaracterized my position; we didn't discuss killing or anything related to it. I explained my work to him, told him about my deeply held respect for life, and explained that my work focuses on improving the lives of those suffering from debilitating diseases."
As it happens, Romney cited another personal encounter as a main factor in his original stance on abortion. While running for the Senate in 1994, Romney recounted how a close family friend had died from complications during an illegal abortion in the 1960s. And it was that event which persuaded him to support safe and legal abortion.
Romney's shift on abortion during the last few years seems to have paralleled similar movement on stem cell research. The Globe reported that in 2002 during an event at Brandeis, Romney issued broad support of stem cell research and declined to offer an opinion on cloning embryos. But after that meeting with Melton, and another with William Hurlbut and the National Catholic Bioethics Center's Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczuk, Romney declared he would work to criminalize research involving cloning. Here's what he wrote in 2005 Boston Globe op/ed after vetoing state legislation aimed at shaping the rules for cloning research:
"The bill's sponsors promise us they have ''crafted strong ethical safeguards," resting their case on the distinction between cloning for human reproduction and cloning for research. Research cloning involves the creation of a human embryo for purposes of experimentation, with the intent to destroy it. Reproductive cloning would continue the process by implanting this embryo into a uterus.
"However, the process of cloning only occurs once, with the creation of the embryo -- a unique genetic entity with the full complement of chromosomes. Once cloning occurs, a human life is set in motion."
"Calling this process ''somatic cell nuclear transfer," or conveniently dismissing the embryo as a mere ''clump of cells," cannot disguise the reality of what occurs: A genetically complete human embryo is brought into being. It is manipulated and experimented upon like so much research material. And then that emerging life is destroyed and discarded. Imagine row after row of laboratory racks, filled with growing human embryos: a ''Brave New World."
Most recently, Romney has been advocating that stem cell research should focus on deriving pluripotent stem cells in ways that don't "create, harm, or destroy human embryos." And at a Republican debate this past June, Romney seemed to indicate that while he thinks it should be legal for researchers to work with left-over embryos from fertility clinics, such research should not have the backing of federal funding.
(The best single article we found on all this is the Boston Globe's take from last December)
I see each of you as short-sighted fools who take a perfect opportunity to discuss and destroy Romney and you hijack it with your Perry nonsense.
Perry is destroying himself. Romney loves it when you focus all your attention on Perry.
Here is a VERY damning article about Romney and all you people can do is attack Perry?
I am starting to think you are all running interference for Romney everytime a thread starts about him.
Interesting that you should comment on that. I was just about to see if Mitt Romney or his campaign said anything to support Rick Perry when he was getting slammed by the MSM and other groups for having a Christian prayer gathering in Houston in August -- "The Response."
The issue was a point in the article that was demonstrably false. A bigger question to ask is how Perry can be trusted on any issue of importance (global warming or otherwise) to Conservatives ? Given the lengths he and his supporters have gone to in engaging in falsehoods, revisionist history and the like, there’s nothing to indicate he will or won’t do the right thing on a given issue. All we have is his “word”, and that is worthless.
He’s already proven himself as an establishment career politician. How far has he come since 1988 ? I don’t think he has moved much at all, given that his switch to the GOP was entirely borne of rank opportunism and not ideology. I think he remains the same slick politician of 1988 that he is today. After all, how different was endorsing a liberal Democrat Gore vs. a liberal Giuliani ?
Did you bother to see what I was responding to before you threw a tantrum ?
Too bad Perry was so weak again.
Too bad.
So you want to debate the fine points of the article. Fine.
I concede on that debate.
But I still repeat my questions:
How has Perry been regarding environmental regulation as Texas Gov?
How do you REALLY think he would be on that subject if Prez?
Please try to forget this article for a moment. Please tell me what you really think.
Oh get off it, Mr. Thread Cop.
Conversations drift. Live with it.
Everyone here already hates Romney to the max. You need us all to sign some kind of anti-Romney pledge?
Post it. I’ll sign it.
I agree with you. Perry is a conservative and would do a good job, but he has been attacked by Obama no less, the media with non-stories and the Romneybots on FR. They are destroying a candidate that could beat Obama and we are going to be stuck with Romney.
If Obama was a Republican, he would be Mitt Romney.
Perry has been trying to roll them back and has been fighting the EPA, which has been trying to destroy TX jobs. Obama and his minions hate him. I am from TX and see what the EPA is trying to do there.
I used to think they were on Romney's payroll, now I'm beginning to think they're on Obama's. They are so determined to knock Perry out and it doesn't matter how many people show them they are helping Romney it has to be deliberate.
How has he been on environmental regs in Texas ? I don’t know. That isn’t a subject I spend a lot of time scrutinizing. I’d yield to other FReepers who have scrutinized that aspect of his record (save his sycophants).
How would he be on that issue as President ? There’s no way to tell, as he may say one thing to appeal to the crowd and act in another way. As an establishment politician and one for whom I’ve found disappointing (to put it mildly) during his decade+ as Governor, I don’t expect any substantive changes that would lessen any draconian regs at the federal level.
Cain will be our nominee, so don’t you fret none about Ricky, n00b.
Thanks, Grey Eagle. Have you ever tried to get through to a Perry-hater on this subject?
FR Rick Perry Scares the Media & Democrats to Death GOP consultant Mark McKinnon says that the editor of a major newspaper told him, "We plan to declare war on Rick Perry and do all in our power to crush him."
Mr. McKinnon was outraged. "No pretense of integrity, professionalism or of unbiased news gathering," he wrote in Investors' Business Daily.
But I doubt he was surprised. This is what the "mainstream" media did to Sarah Palin in 2008, and what likely is in store for anyone Republicans nominate.
But liberals will go after the Texas governor with special venom because he is anti- intellectual, prays in public, takes the Constitution seriously and sometimes carries a handgun, Walter Shapiro wrote in The New Republic.
"It's almost as if Perry's political persona was constructed by bundling together all the fears and phantoms in the left-wing anxiety closet." he said. “…
Perry on Science The liberal media wants you to think Rick Perry puts ideology over science. He doesn't. - …….”Talk about deranged. Chait is claiming that Perry simply ignores reality when it is at odds with ideology. Sort of like EPA administrator Lisa Jackson continuing to link ozone levels to the risk of autism or John Holdren, Obama's science adviser, writing about global warming: "Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?" Or maybe he was thinking about how Centers for Disease Control and Prevention delayed the rollout of the swine flu program. CDC and the White House caved in to the anti-vaccine crazies and pulled multi-dose swine flu shots because they contained thimerasol.
Rick Perry’s Air War (with the EPA)......."Texas alone opted for the unfriendly approach. It’s the only state that did not issue a plan for compliance—and Perry has made it clear that Texas has no intention of complying. The move was a blatant slap to the Obama administration—and once again gave Perry the national spotlight. Defying the climate rules offered him the perfect opportunity to loudly decry the science of global warming—which in his book Fed Up! he calls a “contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight”—and to slam EPA as a “rogue agency” with an “activist mind-set” that has “targeted Texas.” Such rhetoric is viral catnip to the tea party voters who could help catapult Perry to the 2012 presidential nomination."....
Trial lawyers have painted a target on Rick Perry's back (lawsuit abuse reforms and "loser pays" have become a hallmark of Texas economic success).
Trial lawyers prep for war on Perry America’s trial lawyers are getting ready to make the case against one of their biggest targets in years: Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
Among litigators, there is no presidential candidate who inspires the same level of hatred – and fear – as Perry, an avowed opponent of the plaintiffs’ bar who has presided over several rounds of tort reform as governor.
And if Perry ends up as the Republican nominee for president, deep-pocketed trial lawyers intend to play a central role in the campaign to defeat him.
That’s a potential financial boon to a president who has unsettled trial lawyers with his own rhetorical gestures in the direction of tort reform. A general election pitting Barack Obama and Perry could turn otherwise apathetic trial lawyers into a phalanx of pro-Obama bundlers and super PAC donors. …..”
Sept 12, 2011From Treehugger - A Discovery Company “………..For a flavor of what's to come we have only to look to Texas Governor Rick Perry, who seems to channel the vibe pretty well and gets only the rare local challenge….. Instead of dealing with the realities of climate change--regardless of whether you or they think it is caused by human activities--Texas politicians will keep playing the lynch mob role toward EPA, at least until the next Presidential election is over. It works as a political strategy - for now…..”
..Cass Sunstein:...“Above all, Obama’s form of pragmatism is heavily empirical; he wants to know what works.” Word crunchers found that the president’s 2009 inaugural address was the first one to use the term “data” and only the second to mention “statistics.”
....The divide between the empiricists and the believers is also the fault line between the highly educated, technologically adept super-elite and the squeezed and scared middle class. But those hoi polloi voters, who, in 2012, as they were in 2008, seem to be drawn to politicians with big ideas and strong beliefs, may also be responding to something even bigger than this cognitive divide.".....
Don’t tell Ann, she’s in love.
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