HUCKBEE RISE IS MITT ROMNEY’S BLESSING
I watched Mitt Romney on Meet The Press this Sunday. WOW! That’s the first time I’ve every really seen a glimpse of the “presidential” Mitt Romney I’ve heard people talk about.
Tim Russert hit him with some tough questions regarding his faith, his flip-flops and more and Romney demonstrated how a president and a candidate should answer questions.
ON FAITH
Russert asked Romney a series of questions about his faith but the answer that stuck out the most for me, and I’m sure for many, was the one where Romney got a little emotional as he recalled his answer. It was a revealing moment into who Mitt Romney is.
MR. RUSSERT: You, you raise the issue of color of skin. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court, Brown vs. Board of Education, desegregated all our public schools. In 1964 civil rights laws giving full equality to black Americans. And yet it wasn’t till 1978 that the Mormon church decided to allow blacks to participate fully. Here was the headlines in the papers in June of ‘78. “Mormon Church Dissolves Black Bias. Citing new revelation from God, the president of the Mormon Church decreed for the first time black males could fully participate in church rites.” You were 31 years old, and your church was excluding blacks from full participation. Didn’t you think, “What am I doing part of an organization that is viewed by many as a racist organization?”
GOV. ROMNEY: I’m very proud of my faith. It’s the faith of my fathers, and I certainly believe that it’s true and I love my faith. And I’m not going to distance myself in any way from my faith. But you can see what I believed and what my family believed by looking at our lives. My dad marched with Martin Luther King. My mom was a tireless crusader for civil rights. You may recall that my dad walked out of the Republican convention in 1964 in San Francisco in part because Barry Goldwater, in his speech, gave my dad the impression that he was someone who was going to be weak on civil rights. So my dad’s reputation, my mom’s and my own has always been one of reaching out to people and not discriminating based upon race or anything else. And so those are my fundamental core beliefs, and I was anxious to see a change in my church.
I can remember when, when I heard about the change being made. I was driving home from, I think, it was law school, but I was driving home, going through the Fresh Pond rotary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I heard it on the radio, and I pulled over and literally wept. Even to this day it’s emotional, and so it’s very deep and fundamental in my life and my most core beliefs that all people are children of God. My faith has always told me that. My faith has also always told me that, in the eyes of God, every individual merited the fullest degree of happiness in the hereafter and I had no question in my mind that African-Americans and, and blacks generally, would have every right and every benefit in the hereafter that anyone else had and that God is no respecter of persons.
After that response, how could any further discussion of this matter be anything but old news.
ON ABORTION FLIP FLOPS
Russert played some videotape of Romney basically saying he was pro choice, then got into the questioning.
MR. RUSSERT: You now have said you support the 2004 Republican Party platform, which says this: “We say the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We” suggest “a human life amendment to the Constitution.” Such amendment would ban abortions all across the country. Why such a dramatic and profound change after pledging never to waiver on a woman’s right to choose?
GOV. ROMNEY: Well, you know, Tim, I was always personally opposed to abortion, as I think almost everyone in this nation is. And the question for me was, what is the role of government? And it was quite theoretical and, and philosophical to consider what the role of government should be in this regard, and I felt that the Supreme Court had spoken and that government shouldn’t be involved and let people make their own decision. And that all made a lot of sense to me.
And then I became governor and the theoretical became reality, if you will. A bill came to my desk which related to the preservation of life. In this case, it happened to be a bill that would authorize cloning, as well as embryo farming, which would be creating new embryos for the purpose of research and then destroying them. And I brought in people from across the country to talk about this bill, from theologians to scientists, the provost of Harvard University and others, and we talked about it. And I recognized that I simply could not be part of an effort that would cause the destruction of human life. And I didn’t hide from that change of heart. I wrote an op-ed piece in The Boston Globe, described my view that I am pro-life, described why I had changed to become pro-life. I recognize it’s a change. You can find many, many instances of my indicating my position previous to that time of being effectively pro-choice. I didn’t call myself pro-choice, but my position was effectively pro-choice. And that position changed. It changed at that point. And every piece of legislation which came to my desk in the coming years as the governor, I came down on the side of preserving the sanctity of life.
That’s a pretty good answer. In fact the more I listened to Romney, the more I liked what I heard.
I couldn’t help but think, especially after seeing the full on frontal assault against Mike Huckabee, that now is the opportune time for Mitt Romney to get his groove back. Huckabee’s wake is pushing aside Guliani and the others, but if Romney can keep the ship afloat and keep giving solid answers to the tough questions like he got this Sunday he may well emerge as the front runner again.
But in this race…who knows?
Verla Swords Says: December 18th, 2007 at 1:43 am
This is a very good article.Thank you for it. I feel exactely the same way, there is no one running for President that would be in any way near as good. Mitt would be the best thing that could happen to our Country. He is the only one running that could give us back our country. I am 75 years old and have seen alot of Presidents come and go. Mitt would be the best.
Savea Says: December 18th, 2007 at 6:15 am
Great article. Many people look for the wrong reason instead of looking for things that are positive. All these presidential candidates have flip flopped somewhere, but Romney confessed his mistakes in public. I would rather support a candidate who admit his wrongs for the better than some who gives too many excuses. Some people are going too far in attacking somebody’s religion. Maybe we should bring up the past dirt of every religion and we’ll find out how racial were some of these evangelists. There is nothing wrong with religion and it’s different beliefs but when a Christian attacks another Christian is downright un-Christian. If you are a Christian, then let God be the judge of every soul and clean your own house first before you cast that stone. These religion mud slinging makes me sick of the so called Christians. If religion was that good, how come we have so many different religions? And why some of these religions have different opions of the Bible? Did Christ preached like the way some of these evangelists preach on TV by screaming and jumping all over the place? Ignorance, hatred, and hypocrisy is clearly not of God. There is no compassion in the hearts of men because they pray to God for love but their actions against others are contrary to God. Thanks again for the above article.
Stefano Picciotto Says: December 18th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Romney is a seasoned and accomplished flip-flopper.
During his campaign for Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney promised judicial reform for Massachusetts. The reality is he left the system more broken than it was before his term in office. Judge Tuttman is not an isolated incident. Governor Romney also nominated and pushed for the confirmation of Judge Mitchel J. Sikora to the Massachusetts Court of Appeals. When Romney did this, he was made personally aware by me that Judge Sikora had a track record of “outrageous” leniency toward violent criminals. By way of example only, prior to the judicial confirmation hearing, members of the public made Governor Romney personally aware that Judge Sikora had:
Acquitted the man who killed Jacqueline O’ Donald finding that, giving her the date-rape drug GBL was not “reckless or wanton” enough to sustain the charge of manslaughter because Dolan “did not know the drug was dangerous to the point of grave bodily harm.” (See Boston Globe article dated December 31, 2003, “Plymouth Man, 34 Cleared in Death”)
Released a rapist from the Treatment Center for the Sexually Dangerous in Bridgewater, over the strenuous objections of the Department of Corrections. Governor Cellucci called Sikora’s decision “outrageous.” Shortly after Judge Sikora released him, the rapist/pedophile was arrested for stalking girls with a rope, rock, and knife in his car, - his weapons of choice. (See Boston Herald article dated March 12, 1999, “Freed Mass. Rapist Arrested in UConn Stalking Incidents”)
Conducted Monty-Python type trials complete with jurors dressed in Halloween costumes. (See Boston Herald article dated October 31, 2004, “Judges Trick No Treat for Litigants”)
The above are merely a few examples of the abhorrent behavior of Judge Mitchel Sikora. The public documents that Judge Sikora was untruthful during his confirmation hearing. In spite of his personal knowledge all that kind of record, Governor Romney elevated Judge Sikora to a higher court. If Romney becomes president of America, we will see a callous disregard for the quality of the federal judicial appointments and the protection of the public.
Stefano Picciotto
(978) 741-0218
buck Says: December 19th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Stefano,
One man’s flip-flop is another man’s political expediency.
My point is that Romney said in no uncertain terms that he thought one way before he became govenor and changed his mind because of specific knowledge he gained as govenor. Unlike other famous flip-floppers from your neck of the woods, I thought Romney offered a plausible reason for his change of mind in a very presidential way.
In regards to the Sikora appointment I haven’t heard all of that information before. Based on what you posted here, it would seem that Sikora may not belong on the bench, but can you really disqualify Romney for this one appointment? Does it question his judgment as a whole, or just on this one appointment?
You seem to have a personal axe to grind wtih this particular judge. Would you care to elaborate on what that might be?
nutslikebush Says: January 4th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
I was just thinking about the Iowa caucus results and their impact on American politics. What astonishes me is that six tenths of one percent of the American population (i.e., the caucus participants in Iowa) exerts an enormous impact on our presidential candidate selection process.