Prolife Mitt Romney Watch

Another analysis of Romney at NRI

Lays Big Fat Egg

Some fun background:

Prior to his speech that evening the air was positively giddy; one person in attendance told me that Romney was the “best retail politician he’d ever seen — including Reagan.” And while Romney’s charm, coiffure and orthodonture were indeed impressive, I can’t recall another moment in recent political memory where a politician has so badly misjudged a room. You can watch the speech over at NRO [Quicktime link] but I’ll give you the highlights:

A lot of the details we've already heard  - but here's the reaction of the conversion story:

"His come-to-Jesus speech about how he realized at 50+ years of age that he really and truly is pro-life, after he repeatedly said he was pro-choice to get elected in a liberal northeastern state is about as convincing as Clay Aiken jammering on about why his girlfriend couldn’t be here.

I could go on, but suffice to say that even one of his biggest public champions, the incomparable Kathryn Lopez of National Review, was less than impressed, lamenting “Governor Romney missed an opportunity last night.” The Romney campaign needs to do something big and something soon to win over conservatives; they were clearly planning on him capturing that part of the vote early on. But for now, that hissing is the air being let out of Romney’s balloon."

"He's still in favor of killing new lives"

Jim Bopp better get those Romney spin machines in high gear.

Perhaps Peggy Noonan will stop stumping for Obama, Kerry and Chuck and rush to the rescue.

Where's Maggie Gallagher been on Romney?  AWOL?

This deserves it's own post:

Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University, said Romney's use of a national newspaper to reveal his position on a Massachusetts policy issue is a clear sign that he is trying to position himself for the Republican presidential primaries. Berry said Romney is aiming to soften his liberal image among the socially conservative voters who dominate those contests.
      "It is a sign he is not concerned about Massachusetts as we would expect a sitting governor to be," Berry said. "He is speaking to a national audience."
      Romney scoffed at the idea that his interview with The New York Times has anything to do with presidential ambitions. Saying he regularly reads The Note, ABC's daily political newsletter, he argued out that local and regional media outlets are just as accessible to a national audience in the age of the Internet.
      "I don't think there is any such thing as the national media today, and the local and regional media," Romney said. "I read the Note everyday. There is no story that I know that is a local story that is not a national story."
      Romney said Thursday that his position has evolved with the times; the Globe reported last October that two teams of Harvard researchers were preparing to work with embryos created through cloning.
      "I didn't ask President Travaglini to make stem-cell research his first priority. Interestingly, last year, I supported what he was looking for. But this new dimension, which is creating new embryos through cloning, this is a very new line, and I would not cross that line," Romney said Thursday.
      Romney said he reached his decision after meeting with researchers, ethicists and advocates and discussing the issue with his wife, Ann. Ann Romney has multiple sclerosis, a disease that stem-cell research might one day help to treat. He did not elaborate on his wife's condition Thursday.
      If Romney was attempting to impress social conservatives, his effort fell flat. Massachusetts Citizens for Life and the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, which have lobbied heavily against the Legislature's previous efforts to approve stem-cell bills, said they oppose the governor's stance because they believe a human embryo is a human being that should not be destroyed, even if it is left over from in vitro fertilization. The National Right to Life Committee, a prominent Washington-based group, agreed.
      "I'm not sure there is a lot of difference. If you are taking the stem cell from the embryo for research, you have to destroy the embryo. He's still in favor of killing the new lives that are in existence right now," said Carol Tobias, the group's political director. "If that embryo, that human life, is being destroyed for the research, that is not proper. That is not ethical."

Strap Yourselves In: Emergency Flip Flop Forecast

Romney's story that he underwent a metamorphosis after his "awakening on the life issues"- after his education about the killing of embryos on day 14 for the harvesting of stem cells - is about to give birth to another Flip Flop.

Romney, who has been giving the details of his miraculous conversion on November 9, 2004 to every skeptic in the prolife community is going to have more explaining to do.

In Governor Mitt Romney's metamorphosis from social moderate to self-styled conservative presidential candidate, Nov. 9, 2004 , stands out as a seminal date.

On that day, Romney and two aides met in his State House office with renowned Harvard University stem cell researcher Douglas A. Melton. In Romney's retelling, Melton coolly explained how his work relied on cloning human embryos.

" I sat down with a researcher. And he said, 'Look, you don't have to think about this stem cell research as a moral issue, because we kill the embryos after 14 days,' " Romney recalled on " The Charlie Rose Show " last June, characterizing the meeting as a watershed moment for him. "That struck me as he said that."

(sidebar:  The scientist divulges that Romney mischaracterized what happened and no such conversation took place - surprise, surprise)

This shocking discovery  and watershed moment that embryos are being killed, 30 years after Roe v. Wade, caused him to send out a letter to the Republicans saying "science must respect the sanctity of human life", described his "valiant fight" and asked people to pony up some money for his "valiant fight"

It was during that reflection on stem cells (November 9, 2004), Romney said, that he realized he had been wrong about abortion for years.

Yet, in the New York Times, on February 11, 2005, here is his authentic position on the killing of existing embryos for stem cell research

Mr. Romney said in an interview this week and again on Thursday that he supported allowing scientists to use embryos left over from in-vitro fertilization at fertility clinics, a position that goes beyond what President Bush supports. Fertility clinic embryos are likely "going to be destroyed or discarded" anyway, the governor said, so using them for research "does make sense."

But the governor, whose wife, Ann, has multiple sclerosis, a disease that might be helped by stem cell research, said he opposed creating embryos specifically to be used in research, a process known as therapeutic cloning.

The very issue that he claims caused a watershed moment about embryos being killed - didn't sway his position at all regarding the killing of embryos.

From Huffington Post:

Orwell's interest was the language of government, how it's used to manipulate, distort, and mislead - for instance, like Mitt Romney did with this announcement.

Romney's ban is nothing but political posturing. The current debate is not even about the CREATION of stem cells; it is about the use of EXISTING stem cells, of which there is an abundance. Bush has banned the use of all but a few of these existing stem cells, claiming he wouldn't "promote science which destroys life in order to save life." But every year, in fact, thousands and thousands of embryos are destroyed in fertility clinics. They are created in petri dishes as part of fertility treatments like IVF; then they are discarded. Nobody thought much about these discarded embryos until scientists recognized the promise they offered for research. Instead of throwing them out, it was asked, why not find a practical application for them that could perhaps aid human progress?

Again, nobody in the established scientific community is talking about creating embryos right now. Mr. Romney is the only one bringing the issue up. In making his announcement, Mr. Romney muddies the waters of the current debate, clouding the issue and slowing progress - all for his own political gain. It's crass and it's lame.

Instead of fearing an Orwellian future, Mr. Romney should feel right at home in our Orwellian present, after all, his party has led in the creation of this eerily familiar dystopia; an era of unending war, eroding civil liberties, and an authoritarian leadership that holds onto power through the endless promotion of fear. Our government's guiding principles in 2006 seem little different than "1984's: "War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength."

This article is even more enlightening.  Did he discuss this at the National Review Summit?

Most human embryonic stem cells used today were created from embryos left over from fertility treatments.

      Romney said although he supports the use of embryos left over from in vitro fertilization, which might be discarded anyway,

All embryos sitting in the waiting room at Planned  Parenthood are going to be destroyed and  discarded anyway.   All embryos inside the womb of women taking emergency contraception are going to be destroyed and be discarded anyway.   Women on their way for partial birth abortion have children that are going to be destroyed and discarded anyway. 

How is Jim Bopp and the  National Right to Life going to spin this?

Either they are going to have to develop and new and improved doomsday prolife policy - or a big Flip Flop is coming down the pike.

Romney's Peformance at the National Review Summit

Romney's sound bytes in the newspapers can only go so far.

The Jawa Report comments:

There seems to be a general consensus that Romney's speech was 'underwhelming.' I have to agree with that general sentiment.

Clarifying my earlier points, Romney came across as likeable, but he also had a little too much "game show host" vibe going on. He may be completely sincere in what he's saying, but he comes across with a little too much of a "sales pitch" feel, IMHO. He said a lot of the right things, but there's a style issue. The candidates should think of the conservatives as a spurned woman. You need to say the right things, but you damn well better come across as sincere. This speech was the first time a lot of conservatives had a close look at Romney.

National Review Guy

He went out of his way to check off every conservative box—except the one that is politically risky at the moment. The rest of his foreign policy stuff—when he talked about Iran and the broader war—felt very shaky and about an inch deep. His account of how he came to change his view on abortion—through the issue of stem-cell research—isn't very compelling and he would probably be better off not talking about it at all. Fairly or not, people aren't going to believe it. It was his misfortune to boast about signing Grover Norquist's no-tax pledge, after Jeb Bush gave a very mature and persuasive explanation earlier in the day for why he hadn't ever signed the pledge, but still cut taxes each year he was in office. I'm a fan of the pledge myself and I'm glad Romney signed it, but his boast on this night after following Jeb played into what will be the chief vulnerability to his candidacy—the sense that he is simply pandering to the right. Believe me, I prefer politicians pandering to the right than to something or someone else. But it won't be enough to sustain a serious presidential campaign, which has to have a deeper rationale than occupying a niche in the marketplace.

Yeah, it's called conviction.  It's what makes what comes out of your pie hole believable.

Here's another individual with a report on the evening.

Another - There's no joy in Mittville for Mighty Romney has struck out

I think it’s plenty fair, but then I am one of those people who don’t believe it.  Of course, he can’t not talk about it.  He has made it a central part of his makeover from Massachusetts squish moderate to Romney, Conservative Iron Man.  To avoid talking about it now would be to admit that all of his critics’ charges of insincerity and opportunism were correct, which would prove that the man will say anything for votes.  No, he has concocted his implausible “conversion” story, and now he must live with it.  Watch the video of his NRI speech and note his wandering, aimless delivery, his tiresome rattling off of his accomplishments, as if it were just some boilerplate stump speech, and the laundry-list, conservatism 101 nature of the speech (liberals want, uh, they want to increase the size of government and that’s, like, bad!).  Be warned–he drones on for around fifty minutes, so feel free to skip ahead. Look at the video at 32:16, where he informs his audience that “bloated social spending” is called “the welfare state,” in order to get a sense of the thin gruel he was dishing out.  The applause from the audience was suitably weak and scattered.

Even poor K-Lo saw Romney circling the pooper.

Romney's Political Strategist is WEIRD!!!

Eyeon08 has a good wrap up of the Romney Camp Weirdness.

The July 3, 2005 statement from Mass Citizens for Life that confirms Romney never even contacted anyone in the prolife community and his actions working against prolifers in spite of the words coming out of his mouth that he had a miraculous conversion on life issues is worth repeating:

“Similarly, a leading antiabortion group is puzzled: ‘’We honestly don’t know where he stands on this issue,” said Marie Sturgis, executive director and legislative director for Massachusetts Citizens for Life.”

Sturgis, of the Massachusetts Citizens for Life, said Romney does not have regular contacts with her group. ‘’If we could, we would,” Sturgis said. When he ran for governor in 2002, she said, her group considered him an abortion rights supporter; Romney declined to complete the Citizens for Life questionnaire

The Conversion Factor

Weekly Standard:  "Prolife Turn is more recent than you think" was surprisingly posted over at NRO - where K Lo's articles have been missing pieces of the truth.

In that same year, as candidate for election in Massachusetts, he said he agreed with Roe v. Wade, with Medicaid funding of abortion, and with the release of the morning-after pill.

This is all from an article in the new Weekly Standard that is, alas, firewalled. UPDATE: A lot of the same stuff can be found here. I missed it the first time.

Lopez went right to work salvaging - 2002 or 1994, whatever.

2002   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

For what it's worth: I've asked him about 1994 too .

When one of her colleagues points out how Jeb Bush electrified momentum, even recognized in Lopez's own posts -

Which brings me to a fascinating development. When I waxed enthusiastic about Jeb Bush on this happy Corner not quite a week ago, you, my dear K-Lo, responded with something less than overwhelming enthusiasm. I detect a different tone altogether in your posts, below, about the former governor's performance at the Conservative Summit.

Admit it, fair Katherine. To hear the man speak of his convictions—to consider his thoroughly conservative record for eight years as governor of the fourth most populous state—all this is to find oneself wishing that Jeb would run, is it not?

There's a difference between a man whom we know has been present and accounted for in the movement for a decade, and Romney who wants to tell us when the thoughts inside of his brain changed in 2004, while unconstitutionally forcing emergency abortifacients on Catholics in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

he has the same drawbacks we've discussed, but yes, as I've said even before today , he's good. And he was especially good today (there's something that comes with a little freedom too, I imagine). And he would be running today and he would be getting rave reviews from many on the right if he weren't a Governor Bush.

Right man, wrong name, says K Lo, missing the subtle  moral of the story:  Romney's failure to pull out of the single digits in polls after a year of trying to build the enthusiasm Jeb Bush received at the NRO Conservative Summit.

Her colleague responds:

Every time I open my mouth about Jeb, K-Lo, you seem to lose enthusiasm for him. (The only drawback we discussed, by the way, was the former governor's stand on immigration. I continue to insist that it's better than that of McCain and on balance as good as that of Romney.) To aid the cause, I will now...fall silent.

The vacuum of silence in the religious right for Romney is a far more compelling indicator of how the Romney campaign is going, than the silly notion that any of us are going to fall in behind the endorsements of the idiots in Congress who have been executing strategies which have nearly eradicated the structure of democracy and the framework of Constitution of the United States.

 

 

Here is a typical profile of a Romney Supporter

This website is dedicated to helping Mitt Romney win the primary election for president in Illinois in 2008. If the United States government conducts business as usual over the next few decades, a national debt that is already $8.5 trillion could reach $46 trillion or more, adjusted for inflation. That's almost as much as the total net worth of every person in America - Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and those Google guys included. Mitt is the most experienced Budget Balancer.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett folks who can buy Romney a lot of Armani suits, Bumble Bumble, cufflinks, the good old boy network in Washington and plenty of RNC people who were fighting against prolife under the radar. 

Is Warren Buffett and Bill Gates paying for the new religious conversion of Mitt Romney?

Speaking of phonies looking for a gig, Peggy Noonan is getting desperate to get on board ANY BODY'S shtick for 2008.  Has everyone seen her latest Have Mouth Will Fork Tongue Columns in the Wall Street Journal?

Last we left her, her column was stumping for Osama Obama.

Evidently, Obama didn't hire her, as yesterday's column was an overt invitation that she is for hire which went out to Chuck Hagel and of all people, John Kerry.

Peggy Noonan Getting Soft

Wide Awake Cafe

Radioactive Commie Zombies

Peggy Noonan is so wrong

I won't bore with linking the minutia...but couldn't help but link this one:

She defends the horrible CHuck Hagel in an Opinionjornal.com piece. She uses his political duplicity as a laudable component. Maybe if we lived in a vacuum, Hagel couild be taken serious as a man of principal, but that we do not. Hagel is an opportunist like no other.

But so isn't she, my dearies.

I was a fan of Peggy's columns when she was obviously, we now can plainly see, working for the Reagan and Bushies who fell, like we did, for her journalistic opportunism to get hired as a mouthpiece. 

Then, I met her.

It's an interesting phenomenon, being a nobody who finds herself in the company of people most of us only know when we spend a couple of dollars on a Wall Street Journal, the National Catholic Register, etc.   I don't have the duty to pretend I don't see a phoney baloney, an opportunist, full of themselves blowhard, a coward, a headcase, a shiester, carpetbagger or, in the worst case, a slimy snake (which are few, thank God, but they ARE out there).

First time I met her was at a meeting in DC with orthodox Catholics to call Bishop Gregory and Cardinal McCormack to the carpet for giving credibility and authority to the Boisi Call to Action Crowd.  I had every confidence going into that meeting that she was genuine. Suffice it to say, I left Reagan International with the conviction that she was not of our breed. A phoney. A drama queen on a stage executing an academy award performance.

She's one of those people who has been acting so long, you walk away from them with the tragic realization that everything real in their animus has been surpressed by the necessity to put on a gig 24/7 for power, money and fame. 

Peggy's Hagel Hubris was trumped, as far as I'm concerned with how she ended this week's WSJ performance:

A note too on John Kerry, who, on the floor of the Senate, also talked about Iraq this week, and said he would not run for president. Clearly he saw the lipstick writing on the wall: This is the year of the woman. He also might have been acting on the sense that this is a time of ongoing and incipient political flux. The major parties seem as played out as they are ruthless, and the arc of political fame is truncated: nobodies become somebodies become has-beens before half the country knows their name. The Democrats have no idea what they stand for, the Republicans only remember what they stood for.

But there was Mr. Kerry, liberated by the death of a dream and for once quite human as he tried to tell it the way he actually saw it. Took the mock right out of me. Good for him, and for Mr. Hagel. I wonder if we are seeing the start of a new seriousness.

The year of the woman?

Another hero of the evening was John Kerry among the ruthless has-been nobodys giving witness to credible intellectual thought?

What the day of reckoning is actually about is so elusive to phony political hacks and the journalistic whoring, their foolishness lacks the entertaining grip it once had upon anyone who is genuinely involved on any side of anything. 

They seem to be standing out now like sore thumbs.

Good Question: "Why Gamble on Romney?"

Why Gamble on Romney

Most folks just haven't figured it out yet why wealthy Republicans want the Religious Right to Gamble on Romney and overlook stellar prolifers for Flip Flop.  Two Words: Flat Tax.

The 2008 Race couldn't be any better example of how the wealthy take a candidate who'll protect their money on the backs of middle income and poor, and give him advice on what to say in the public square to get the religious right to vote for him.

The rich country club Republicans have poured their money into Romney and given him an extreme makeover -- and now the money people need to get the religious right on board their bus or the democrats are going to win the election and storm their cash reserves.

Here's the new boss, same as the old boss.

The problem, of course, comes when Brownback insinuates Gov. Romney’s pro-life positions aren’t authentic simply because he’s changed over the years. ~Nancy French, Evangelicals for Mitt

I needn't remind you, need I, that the Frenches are the Evangelical Gadflies that had no credible substantive arguments to reply to the evidence being produced that challenges Romney's newly found  retroactive crusader for the culture of life -- and responded with an Evangelical ad hominem that blew the lid off of Romney's Newbury Street hairdo to reveal the malice against parents in Massachusetts who have been on the ground protecting children from Romney's initiatives and programs.

One of the questions Romneyites need to be able to answer is this: on the issues that matter deeply to them, why should social conservatives gamble on Romney when they know they have a reliable representative in Brownback?   

Because they are foolish enough to think we don't recognize the difference between a candidate who has been available and supportive for 10 years and one that shut the door in our faces, attacked us, put programs in place to recruit kids into promiscuity, Catholics into handing out abortifacients in spite of the laws that protect us, knows every stem cell in biolabs is 'extra' and he is therefore pro stem cell use, knows the laws of Massachusetts still prohibit granting a marriage license to anybody but one man and one woman, and the accumulating lies won't ever be exposed when the real run for the White House begins and mainstream voters have to examine the facts of record?

The only people paying attention to what is going on for the race of 2008 now fall into three categories.

They have money they want to protect.

They want sinful sexuality and killing to be enthroned as virtues.

They are holding to the principles of God's sovereignty regardless of the pagans dancing at the base of the mountain.

The wealthy Republicans have no concept of the religious revolution brewing under the surface for the past two years.  They are too blind to see the writing on the wall.

The Mitt Romney Friday Flip Flop Flyer

Welcome to the First Friday Flip Flop Flyer - a Report that we at the Prolife Mitt Romney Watch will be bringing you each Friday.

Mitt had an eventful week.    It seems he's mischaracterizing people as endorsing him who haven't - and people who are advising him who aren't.

First the announcement that Hastert and Boehner were in.

I spoke to Boehner's office myself - as did many others..and it seems Boehner isn't endorsing anyone.  Flip Flop.

DeLay warns former colleagues against endorsing presidential hopefuls early , saying everyone ought to wait and see who the true conservatives are.  Flip Flop has some 'splaining to do he said.

The dust hadn't even settled when Romney claimed he had a list of advisors, including Henry Kissinger.   When blogosphere smelled the rat, Romney's people had to admit this was a list of people who once stood in the same room with him and breathed the same air.  Flip Flop.

The right to bear arms people made an astute observation vis a vis Romney's dirty tricks:

This is kind of like the thief who sticks a gun in your ribs and demands $100, but then gives you $25 back to “soften” the blow.  That's what we in Massachusetts call Mitt's Flop Flip.

Like we've been saying...Romney's against killing embryos unless they're extra.  Since they're all extra, there isn't an embryo in Massachusetts he'd object to killing to harvest stem cells, it softens the blow.  Flip Flop's Flop Flip.

Then, Romney's point man for recruiting conservatives was hailed as a liar for saying McCain is a proabort.  Flip Flop.

Remember when Romney had nothing of substance to say of the list of Romney deceptions that go all the way to 2005 - and he spread the shocking news that the author of the Romney Deceptions had a habit of attacking prominent Republicans like Paul Celluci? (as if any prolifer would see that as a bad thing??) 

The chicken came home to roost.  Celluci's with the Gadfly about Romney.

Today at Waterloo, Romney's 2002 Flip Flop on biligual education hit blogosphere.   To get elected in Massachusetts, he opposed the ballot initiative to replace bilingual education with English.  Once elected, Flip Flop.

This from the comments section of the blog:

Cooler,

Romney supported English immersion his entire term as Governor. His recent quote in Waterloo is 100% consistent with his record as Governor.

So this is not a flip-flop. The most you could claim is that Romney changed his position in 2002 before he became Governor. Is that what we're talking about here? Old news from the 2002 campaign that completely disregards his record?

7:52 PM

Caucus Cooler said...

You are right. He supported it as Governor. But he opposed it while on the campaign. It's significant given his pattern.

7:58 PM

Prolife March - 1 out of 10 had Brownback Stickers

According to this witness