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Tag: pandering

Romney V. Women

Mitt Romney’s public stance on abortion may have changed at least twice in the past 25 years, but his callous approach to women’s rights has stayed the same.

More than 20 years ago, according to a news report published over the weekend, Romney rushed to a Boston hospital and tried to use his position as a lay Mormon leader to intimidate a pregnant woman experiencing complications into rejecting abortion.

Romney apparently said something to the effect of, “Well, why do you get off easy when other women have their babies?”

She chose the procedure anyway. “He was blind to me as a human being,” she says now.

Less than five years later, running against Ted Kennedy in 1994, Romney claimed that he was a stronger supporter of abortion rights than the Massachusetts senator. And now he hews to the orthodox anti-abortion line of the Republican Party platform. His willingness to change with the political winds twice over is not a sign of “pragmatism” or “moderation” — it shows that he serves only his ambition, even by pandering to extremism. And that he’ll do whatever the Republican establishment demands.

Here’s a clip from a debate with Kennedy where Romney paints himself as a champion of the right to choose, someone sensitive to the plight of women seeking underground abortions:

Of course, just this month, asked by conservative Christian leader and talk show host Mike Huckabee whether he would be a pro-life president, Romney had a very different story.

“My view is that the Supreme Court should reverse Roe v Wade and send back to the states the responsibility for deciding whether it is legal or not,” he said. “Would it be wonderful if everyone in the country agreed with you and me that life begins in conception and that there’s a sanctity of life that’s part of a civilized society and that we’re all going to agree there should not be legal abortion in the nation? That’d be great. But I don’t think that’s where we are right now. But I do think where the majority of the American people would go is say let the states make the decisions.”

In fact, it would appear the majority of the American people have made clear for nearly 40 years now that they do not want the question returned to the states — and that taking a federalist stance on this issue is really just a way of sugarcoating an approach that ignores the safety and health of women.

Follow National Correspondent Matt Taylor on Twitter @matthewt_ny

Huntsman Calls for Quick Afghanistan Exit; Strategist John Weaver Slams His Candidate’s Party

Esquire is teasing its August issue this week, featuring exclusive interviews with former Utah Governor and Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, who will formally enter the Republican presidential fray next Tuesday, as well as with his chief strategist, former John McCain advisor John Weaver.

Huntsman took the leftmost tack on Afghanistan of any Republican candidate except libertarian Texas Rep. Ron Paul, making even Mitt Romney’s recent statements that we needn’t be fighting a “war of independence” for the Afghanis, but that he would keep U.S. troops in the country per the Pentagon’s advice, seem relatively hawkish:

“If you can’t define a winning exit strategy for the American people, where we somehow come out ahead, then we’re wasting our money, and we’re wasting our strategic resources,” Huntsman told Esquire.  “It’s a tribal state, and it always will be. Whether we like it or not, whenever we withdraw from Afghanistan, whether it’s now or years from now, we’ll have an incendiary situation… Should we stay and play traffic cop? I don’t think that serves our strategic interests.”

Weaver, for his part, decried the “cranks” in the Republican primaries:

Weaver sees Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and the presumed front-runner, as a man afraid to take a stand — or, more accurately, as a man unafraid of taking every stand. “What version are we on now?” Weaver said. “Mitt 5.0? 6.0?”

And in former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, another leading candidate, Weaver sees what he considers the worst tendencies of his party — pandering to the G.O.P.’s hard-right margins at the risk of falling out of serious presidential contention.

Huntsman is setting himself up as the moderate, reasonable alternative to Mitt Romney; but the dynamic of the race is such that Romney will be the moderate, reasonable alternative to whoever emerges from the far-right as the choice of Tea Party activists and evangelicals. Whether there is ideological space for a challenge to Romney from the left will be key in determining whether Huntsman’s campaign is viable. [Esquire]