Mitt Romney opened his mouth and inserted his foot again. However, it turns out that he was replacing Hillary Clinton’s words with his foot, so it may well be a trade up.

You see, back in 1998 he said that Hillary Clinton was "very much right" that "it takes a village:"

Hillary Clinton is very much right, it does take a village, and we are a village and we need to work together in a non-skeptical, no-finger-pointing way…

Now, you see, "it takes a family". Just in case you missed that, he was talking about Rick Santorum.

Perhaps one should say that Romney’s flip-flops take a village. There are so many of them…


Soren Dayton

Soren Dayton is an advocacy professional in Washington, DC who has worked in policy, politics, and in human rights, including in India. Soren grew up in Chicago.

4 Comments

dc-conservative · April 17, 2007 at 6:20 PM

I sincerely doubt that Mitt Romney truly agrees with Hilary’s perspectives on social nurturing with respect to children. Mormonism holds very strong family values, perhaps stronger than those of any other religion. He raised 5 successful children (3 harvard business grads, 1 medical school student, and 1 music producer for an ad agency) while working as the Chairman of a multibillion dollar company. There is no debate on his ability to successfully raise a child, nor the effectiveness of his theories on raising children.

The Boston Globe has been notorious for misquoting and misrepresenting politically important information, this is clearly another example of its misuse.

The latest ‘flip-flop’ is comparing the boston globe’s quote and comparing it to a direct quote from Mitt. This is not a real comparison, the direct quote can be trusted, the globe can’t (unless it has direct evidence, in which case it should show it).

Either way, everyone agrees that the community is an essential component to the development of humans, but the family component is arguably more important. Supporting both sides is valid and both can be supported by entirely different contexts. As an example, i think the community is essential to social development in the later stages of life and I also think (as well as all modern psychological theory) that a mother and a father are required for early/late stage emotional and early social development. Am I a flip-flopper? Think outside the box for a minute, look at the scope of the topic in discussion, and realize that scope of these ‘flops’ are not black & white, but diverse & multifaceted.

dskinner11 · April 18, 2007 at 1:05 AM

The Globe took the quote way out of context. Romeny wasn’t using the village phrase to talk about children in 1998. For the full quote and context visit “The Corner” and Katherine Lopez’s post at around 6:00 on Tuesday.

In 1998 Romney was used the village phrase when talking about the lack of public/private joint ventures in Mass. At the time he was CEO of Bain Capital and was talking about the inefficiency and lack of cooperation in the government interactions with private business.

Conservatives need to stick together when it comes to left-wing criticism. I recognize that in a contested primary there will be disputes within the party, but let’s make sure they are based in fact and not prompted by liberal media outlets trying to make the entire GOP look bad.

ee2793 · April 18, 2007 at 8:12 PM

Soren takes a little lib hit piece and runs with it…

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