Is Mitt Becoming More Conservative?

The American Thinker ^ | August 31, 2012 | Rosslyn Smith

[Cincinatus' Wife]

...Protecting the middle class might be the theme of Obama's campaign ads, but the defining movement of this campaign came when Obama belittled the efforts of Main Street America when he stated that "you didn't build that." Those sneering words about smart, hardworking people revealed the ugly side of Obama's redistributionalist ideology. As in 2008, most of the media accept all the carefully scripted images of Obama as Gospel truth while they busy themselves trying to either hide or spin away all those extemporaneous words and deeds that display Obama's true beliefs and character as being either out of context or aberrational....

This campaign is coming down to two competing views of America. As it plays out, I think something very profound may be happening to Mitt Romney. Romney reminds me of a good many smart businessmen I have known. They live their own lives by a set of solid small-c conservative rules, but they are too busy solving smaller daily problems to think much about political conservatism as a coherent system. Such people often pay lip service to the left-of-center conventional media wisdom about big government and public morality even as they rigorously practice all the bourgeois virtues of thrift, hard work, neighborliness, sobriety, and sexual continence in their personal affairs.

....this very smart, very competitive man is facing an opponent who is perhaps the most rigidly ideological man ever to become president. Romney doesn't like what he sees happening to the nation, nor does he much like the person he is running against. Confronted with the problem of beating not just the person, but also the ideology, and then fixing what is broken, Romney may be discovering for the very first time that he is actually far more ideological than he ever thought he was.

[ansel12]

See post 8, Mitt is a liberal ideologue, he is not a figure that can be manipulated.

[tsowellfan]

Are you suggesting Romney is in favor of infanticide?

Are you one of those posters who also believe Romney's the same kind of socialist as Bambi?

1) No, I'm suggesting that Obama is in favor of infanticide.

2) No, I never suggested Romney is a socialist of any kind (let alone the same kind as Obama). A liberal and RINO yes, socialist, no.

3) If you are a Romney supporter, it's people like you who help increase the opposition against him from within the party with your quick accusations.

Part of me is hoping you are not a Romney supporter because in your comment you just referred to him as a "socialist".

It's one thing to refer to a candidate as a socialist and another to refer to that candidate as a socialist and still be a supporter.

[Lakeshark]

I asked two questions for clarification, that's all, no need to get apoplectic. My reference to Romney as a "socialist" was a bit tongue in cheek to those on this forum whoe have an irrational hatred for him, I'm glad to see you aren't one of them. That being said, if you want to know the depth of my support for him, see my tagline......

[tsowellfan]

I asked two questions for clarification

I hope I made it clear enough the second time.

[Timber Rattler]

Again, is the GOP-e some label for fiscal conservatives?

If you don't know what the GOP-E is, then you are clearly on the wrong board.

[AFPhys]

I am wondering just why you believe that you are the only person on the whole site who has privy to that “bombshell”.

I am far more concerned about the information that is in “2016: Obama’s America” than what Romney says in a clipped up CBS interview. I believe that is consistent with the position of most FReepers.

[ansel12]

You want to hook anti-Mormonism to this site, then be prepared to be shouted down by real conservatives who know better because there are more Mormons than just Romney running for office, and they are conservative. Nor do we want lurkers and new/potential conservatives thinking that we accept that around here.

I know that you keep pestering and begging the owner, Jim Robinson, to impose that Mormonism/protect Bishop Romney censorship rule, but he keeps shooting you down, doesn't he.

[Timber Rattler]

You’re done.

You really think so, bub?

Ha! I'm only getting started!

[ansel12]

For women whose health is at risk, this is again the mother's decision, and a difficult one.

In the 1960s the left tricked us with that "health of the mother" abortion argument, even Reagan, against his instincts, submitted to the argument when he signed a bill in 1967, we quickly learned that "health" means anything you want it to mean, there isn't a single abortion that is blocked by a "health" definition, well this isn't 1966 anymore, it is 2012.

We have had 45 years of abortion wars with a fully developed pro-life movement for decades, we know that "health" means pro-abortion.

Five days ago, Mitt Romney reverted back to his 42 year long, pro-abortion position.

Just a week ago, Mitt's supporters were making the argument that he had sincerely and truly become pro-life, what now?

[Lazamataz]

While I would love to believe it, I suspect it is a pipe dream for us to follow along.

The Rules Change stuff kinda tipped their hand.

I am willing to be surprised.

[ansel12]

She didn’t hop on board until a year after the TEA party movement started.

Palin was out there fighting tooth and nail within days after the election, making her first powerful endorsement victory in December of 2008, after a few months of her fighting a one woman battle against the Obama machine, the media, the world, THEN other conservatives and the tea party emerged.

Palin was way in front of the tea party, and DeMint, and Perry, and others and you could see them grow bolder, and more vocal as they watched her taking on the world, those first few months of 2009.

[ansel12]

Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land since the '70's. Get over it. You're trying to inject something into this election that isn't, and will never be, an issue in this election.

It obviously is an issue in this election, because five days ago, Mitt Romney changed his abortion position.

[ansel12]

Thanks.

[Gatún(CraigIsaMangoTreeLawyer)]

You are most welcome.

[ansel12]

I believe that is consistent with the position of most FReepers.

You think that the majority of freepers are proabortion?

I will say that this is the least pro-life thread that I have ever seen on freerepublic, where abortion has come up.

This thread is a historical keeper, and a testament to the Romney effect, it is happening much quicker than any of us anticipated.

[BlackElk]

I went back to the wikipedia article on Mittler's mommy Lenore to find any reference to Lenore ever being pro-life. You are right. I found it under the "Later Years" section. She is said there to have been "ambivalent" during her ill-fated US Senate campaign (1970) and to have come out two years later as "pro-life." There is a link to a New York Times article (#6) by Sheryl Gay Stolberg making these claims. She notes that Mittler in running for the US Senate in 1994 and Governor in 2004 claimed that he was like his mother, i.e. personally opposed to abortion but believed that a woman has the right to choose. I would credit him with knowing his mother more accurately than you or I. The only alternative would be that Mittler was lying. Heaven forfend!!!

That amounts to the all too familiar liberal blather to defend themselves from being accurately called pro-abortion. It has as much credibility as "exceptions" for a mother's "health" which is so loosely defined by the UN's World "Health" Organization as to justify abortion if somehow continued pregnancy might upset a woman by interfering with appointments with her milliner or manicurist. Just this week, even before he was nominated, Mittler told an interviewer that he favors a "health" exception.

I feel sure as well that Mittler has been substantially influenced by Lenore and that is one of his biggest problems. Mitt Romney??? As Gertrude Stein observed before he was born: "There is no there there."

So what if Mittler has "heard from the base." All that does is provide him with another Etch-a-Sketch moment not unlike the moment when he might be inaugurated after which we would all find out to out horror what has been elected. Governor Etch-a-Sketch is no more "pro-life than Obozo was about "hope and change" for most citizens.

As to the "stalking horse" stuff, that is exactly what George Romney was during the 1968 POTUS campaign. William Scranton had served the same role in 1964. Nelson Rockefeller was then embarrassed over dumping his faithful wife of many years for Happy Murphy, herself the wife of one Dr. James Murphy by whom she had four children whose custody she abandoned in her rush to marry Nelson. When Nelson ran briefly in his own right, he was beaten by Goldwater in the California (of all places!) primary. That was the beginning and end of Nelson's run for POTUS.

George Romney ran briefly to see whether there was a market in the GOP in 1968 for a leftist candidate (albeit one faithful to his wife unlike Nelson) and one that would make Nelson Rockefeller look arguably "moderate" by comparison. Maybe GOP voters might mellow toward Rockefeller and accept his adulterous lusts clothed in more "moderate" imaging in contrast to George Romney's outright radicalism however faithful to Lenore. Of course, Nixon was nominated in 1968 although Nelson's name was placed in nomination.

Also look to Wikipedia for its article on George Romney and to the ninth paragraph of the section on his tenure as HUD Secretary, which well describes his sponsorship of "Operation Breakthrough" to forcibly integrate suburbs like Warren, Michigan, and Black Jack, Missouri. He and his scheme were abandoned by Nixon.

I am among the older generation of FReepers now, having been born in 1946, but I was a Reagan staffer at the 1968 convention. I was fully aware of the 1968 campaign and I know what I witnessed. George Romney was Rockefeller's stalking horse even if he imagined he might have some excuse to run in his own right. Every bit as socially polished as his son, George said he had been "brainwashed" to support the Viet Nam War. Poof! There went the original non-credible Governor Etch-a-Sketch. He served briefly as HUD Secretary in Nixon's cabinet and tried to use his position to interfere with urban blue collar white families evacuating inner cities for the suburbs.

[BlackElk]

You can believe (as I do) in those lofty words of the GOP platform OR you can support Romney. You cannot rationally do both. Romneycare contains even worse persecution of religious institutions than does Obozocare. Romneycare does not, as I understand it, provide ANY exemption for direct employees of a religious denomination. Obozocare does provide a verrrry narrow exception but not in any way acceptable in the context of Obozocare.

Both of the major party disgraces in this year's election seek and have sought to persecute religion, specifically pro-life religions. Both would require Catholic bishops (and other pro-life religious leaders) to sell their souls on the installment plan with each insurance premium check for "medical care" that they write by impermissibly packaging moral outrages like abortion, sex change operations and what not with quite moral coverage like diabetic care, cancer care, cardiovascular care, etc. Each time a Catholic bishop signs such a check or causes it to be signed is a mortal sin. He has a choice: life in prison on the installment plan, resign as bishop or spend eternity in hell. What was that about the First Amendment again???

It was morally permissible to overlook Rick Perry's gubernatorial blunder on gardasil especially since he had reversed himself credibly before his brief POTUS run and undone the policy.

That cannot be said of the religious persecution and pro-abort policies of Romneycare and Obozocare and their respective sponsors. Both are lifetime pro-aborts and lifetime serial liars as well. Neither has any credibility on such issues if claiming to suddenly have become "pro-life." Platform or no platform.

Sorry, as to Romney, you are on your own. I do not care to line up for a chance to touch the hem of his or Obozo's garment. Now or ever.

[ansel12]

Here is how Mitt has been describing his mother’s abortion position to the world, you can how people get confused between truth and Mitt.

“My position has been the same throughout my political career, and it goes back to the days of 1970,” he said. “There was a woman who was running for political office, U.S. Senate. She took a very bold and courageous stand in 1970, and that was in a conservative state. That was that a woman should have the right to make her own choice as to whether or not to have an abortion. Her name was Lenore Romney, she was my mom. Even though she lost, she established a record of courage in that regard.”