Mitt Romney says he is going to try to repeal McCain-Feingold. Fine, I agree that McCain-Feingold is bad, as do most conservatives. But… Isn’t this laughable? I mean, this guy advocated taxing political contributions to fund "clean elections". Where is Mitt Romney? Wherever the wind blows.
MItt Romney’s appearance on This Week will likely be viewed as one of the fundamental mistakes in the campaign. Not only has he had a problem with his statements on why he voted for Paul Tsongas. He is going to have another problem on taxes. In talking about taxes and Read more…
Mitt Romney explained today why he voted for Paul Tsongas in 1992. He said: "When there was no real contest in the Republican primary, I’d vote in the Democrat primary, vote for the person who I thought would be the weakest opponent for the Republican." However, there are several problems Read more…
I think that this press release just about says it all. No need to comment. Apparently this was triggered by the Romney campaign circulating statements comparing Sam Brownback and Mitt Romney’s record on abortion: Mitt Romney’s Campaign Misleads Voters about Senator Brownback’s Position on Abortion "Mitt Romney’s flip flops are Read more…
Mitt Romney got slammed yesterday for flip-flopping on campaign finance reform. First The Hill wrote about it and then Caucus Cooler, a great Iowa blog, got his hands of Romney on C-SPAN video sounding like a wild-eyed campaign finance reform radical (below too). Then the Romney campaign sent out talking Read more…
The Hill reports that in 2002 Mitt Romney advocated radical campaign finance reform: “Mr. Romney campaigned in favor of clean elections, which provides public money to candidates for state office who meet strict fundraising requirements,” the Telegram & Gazette reported. “But he suggested an alternative funding method. Instead of providing Read more…
Update: The Boston Herald wrote about Romney’s lousy record on this stuff this morning.
According to Bloomberg, Romney has been so butchered on his flip-flopping on social issues, that now he wants to talk about economic issues. There his strategy seems to be to just lie rather than flip-flop.
Mitt Romney said the other day:
McCain opposed President Bush’s tax cuts, Romney noted.
“I supported them,” the former governor said.
Like most things that Mitt Romney says now about his record as governor, it just isn’t true. I refer you to an AP article from 2003, at the end of the post. (H/T Romney is Fraud).
We will begin with Barney Frank’s praise of Mitt Romney for standing up to George Bush:
"I was very pleased," Frank said afterward. "Here you have a freshman governor refusing to endorse a tax cut presented by a Republican president at the height of his wartime popularity."
Agreeing on tax policy with Barney Frank is not usually how one runs to the right, but Mitt Romney is smarter than the rest of us… Need to keep reading? There’s more:
According to the observer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Romney told the delegation that he "won’t be a cheerleader" for proposals he doesn’t agree with, "but I have to keep a solid relationship with the White House."
Shawn Feddeman, Romney’s spokeswoman, said the governor has neither endorsed nor opposed the tax cut plan because "it’s just not a state matter."
However, while President Bush was pushing for tax cuts, without Romney’s "cheerleading", Romney was open to tax increases:
In addition to refusing to endorse the president’s tax cut, the governor surprised several people at the meeting by saying he is open to a federal increase in gas taxes. "He wants it dedicated to transportation construction," Capuano said.
I don’t suppose that will make it into his speech today… For nearly everything that Romney says he is for now, you will find him saying the opposite. And for nearly everything that he says about his record, you will find that it is false. Lexis is your friend.
In the recent kerfuffle over the relationship between Mitt Romney’s universal health care plan and abortion, the Romney campaign issued a response in the "Myth vs. Fact" mode (although, I tend to think of them as "Mitt versus Reality"). At the end Romney said that he had a pro-life record, had defended the culture of life, and mentioned his position on embryonic stem cell research:
Governor Romney Supports Adult Stem Cell Research But Has Opposed Efforts To Advance Embryo Destructive Research In Massachusetts And He Has Not Supported Public Funding For Embryo Destructive Research.
That seems clear. However, today, I was forwarded a recent release from the Republican National Coalition for Life, a Phyllis Schlafly organization. They have a weekly update, and last week it said that Mitt Romney is not pro-life. The whole letter is after the jump, but I wanted to illustrate a couple of points from it, which was titled "Mitt Romney Supports Killing Human Embryos for Research":
Governor Romney, who has established an exploratory committee for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, says he is now “pro-life” after more than thirty years of staunch support for Roe v. Wade. How can he make that claim when, on the one hand he says he opposes creating human embryos for research purposes (cloning), yet, on the other hand he says he supports using human embryos created for another purpose, that of in vitro fertilization? It’s a distinction without a difference! He sanctions the killing of embryos “left over” from IVF treatments “provided that those embryos are obtained after a rigorous parental consent process that includes adoption as an alternative.”
The last is a quote from an op-ed that Romney wrote in the Boston Globe. In this case, Romney vetoed a bill that legalized and funded "therapeutic cloning" and embryonic stem cell research. In his piece Romney declared:
Stem cell research does not require the cloning of human embryos. Some stem cells today are obtained from surplus embryos from in-vitro fertilization. I support that research, provided that those embryos are obtained after a rigorous parental consent process … Known as altered nuclear transfer, this method could allow researchers to obtain embryonic stem cells without the moral shortcut of cloning and destroying a human embryo.
A bill that includes methods such as these and bans all human cloning would receive my full support. I share the excitement and hope that new cures to terrible diseases like multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, and Parkinson’s could soon be within our reach.
In other words, it seems, Romney was opposed to cloning, not embryonic stem cell research, as such.
That doesn’t seem consistent with his statement that, "He Has Not Supported Public Funding For Embryo Destructive Research". Isn’t that just a clear contradiction?
(more…)
The latest attack on Mitt Romney’s abortion conversion narrative involves his signature healthcare plan — which he now is distancing himself from. The question, raised by Red State and The Prowler and based on more information from Mass Resistance, is whether the healthcare plan expanded publicly funded abortion, which Romney Read more…
This can’t be smart. There goes Romney’s good media week. Romney launches an ad hominem attack against Brian Camecker, author of the the Mitt Romney Deception piece. Romney has been bleeding from that and an AP story about it. In an attempt to undermine Camenker’s credibility, Romney’s campaign says: Camenker Read more…