Today may be the day that the national media will be seen to turn their attention to Mitt Romney. David Broder wrote a WaPo article about Romney’s “mixed record”. And the Boston Globe, no friend of Romney, started to document what they call his “dance to the right”.
Let’s start with the Broder article. First, Broder does not challenge Romney’s credentials as a conservative, although we will see that the Globe does:
But Romney is a staunch conservative who finds himself running against all that his state symbolizes to national Republican voters — he opposes single-sex marriage, stem cell research and abortion. That may help him with GOP conservatives who hold sway in the party’s primaries.
However, Broder does argue that he left a shattered MA Republican Party:
His efforts to challenge the Democrats and promote Republican candidates for the legislature failed. His partner in the statehouse, Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, lost a bid to succeed him. And Romney is leaving office with the state GOP weaker than when he arrived.
Indeed, with Kerry Healey losing, Massachusetts will have its first Democrat governor since Mike Dukakis (with John Kerry as Lt. Gov.).
The Globe story more directly attacks what they perceive to be flip-flops:
When he ran against Ted Kennedy for the Senate in 1994, Romney wrote a letter to the Massachusetts Log Cabin Club, pledging that as “we seek to establish full equality for American gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent.”
and:
While running for governor in 2002, Romney and his running mate, Kerry Healey, distributed pink fliers at a Gay Pride parade, declaring “Mitt and Kerry wish you a great Pride weekend.”
and:
As governor, he appointed openly gay and lesbian people to high-profile administration positions. He doubled the budget line item for the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, until he tried to disband it last May — more political theater for the Republican right.
In addition to being pro-choice in 1994 and 2002 before he was pro-life (today). This will be interesting to watch.
1 Comment
governmentissue · November 29, 2006 at 11:56 PM
One of the big surprises of the mid terms was that 30% of Evangelicals voted for Dems. Evangelicals have been taken advantage of by the Bush White House and will probably not really fall for Romney or McCain pretending to suddenly be against gays and abortion. Evangelicals are finding out that it is better to have a Democrat who supports some of your issues (poverty, prison reform, environment) than a Republican who just fakes two of them (gays, abortion). Romney is going to get hit hard from the right on his flip flops and hit hard from the left for his positions. I think the majority of people in the middle are sick of the Republican party kissing up to the anti gay/abortion crowd so much as well. Its not going to be Romney in 08.
Comments are closed.