Dean Barnett Tackles Mitt Romney
For the dear readers out there, I'm an old-fashioned sort of girl. Yes, I read the blogs, but I prefer to dig up news through the news outlets. Occasionally, a well-put together commentary post strikes my fancy. Today is one such day. Dean Barnett is is blogging alongside Hugh Hewitt, has an excellent piece regarding Mitt Romney. Here is a taste of it:
Good news for me! A day after I wrote that campaign ’06 can’t begin soon enough, I notice that National Review has run a cover of Mitt Romney and John McCain duking it out for the Republican nomination. Call it a double dose of good news. Not only has the campaign begun, but my preferred candidate, Mitt Romney, has been elevated to the semi-finals by the NR folks.
I know there are a lot of people who are wondering why this semi-obscure one-term governor of our nation’s bluest state has so knocked the conservative media on its collective tush. Indeed, it is a phenomenon. A long-standing Senator of impeccable conservative credentials like Sam Brownback throws his hat in the ring, and the conservative media yawns. And yet Mitt Romney has K-Lo and others panting in anticipation of a Romney administration...
...But Romney is different. First of all, he’s brilliant. When you spend even a little time with him, you see how his mind attacks a problem from every conceivable angle. This requires an intellectual curiosity and an intellectual industriousness that is foreign to nearly all of our politicians.
Second, he’s a profoundly decent man. All that stuff about what a perfect family he has and how committed he is to it isn’t a crock. And he’s really nice – his affability is no Clintonian act...
...On the issue of gays, I think there’s little inconsistency if any between his 1994 positions and his current ones. Romney has never been a hater – it’s simply not his style. One of his most prominent local critics, my one-time friend who later turned into a notorious crank, Brian Camenker, has complained on the dignified airs of The Daily Show that Romney was not only pro-gay in 1994, as governor his administration hired numerous homosexuals. The horror!
The controversy over this is that some can’t figure how Romney could treat gays as equals and still be against gay marriage. I don’t find that to be a particularly difficult brain-teaser unless you subscribe to the Andrew Sullivan theory that anyone who’s not eager to overturn millennia of marital traditions is by definition a latter day Bull Connor. Romney is against gay marriage but also for treating gays with dignity and respect; the two are not mutually exclusive...
...And yet he was pro-choice. It’s fair to ask, why? To get a good answer, you have to look at the times.
Romney in 1994 was running against Ted Kennedy. In 1994, Ted Kennedy was vulnerable. The Palm Beach non-rape scandal was still fresh in voters’ minds, and Kennedy’s brand of big government politics had fallen into disrepute. 1994 was a dreadful year for Democrats, so dreadful that even Ted Kennedy was in trouble. As late as September of that campaign year, Romney held a slight lead over Kennedy in the polls.
If Romney had run as pro-life, his campaign would have been a non-starter. He never would have had a chance. So, in my opinion, as a concession to reality, he ran with a “commitment to preserving a woman’s right to choose.” That’s the euphemism pro-life politicians used when they ran as pro-choice. While he defended the need for access to abortion services to assuage the jitters of Commonwealth voters, he never took up the morality of abortion during that election season.
Dean lays out the case very well, and he also points out why Sam Brownback isn't even a contender against a heavyweight like Romney. I am looking at a possible Romney/Pawlenty ticket while the kids believe he would be better suited with Giuliani teaming up with him. Either ticket isn't bad, and is sure to be a wrecking ball against whomever the Democrats decide to put up. Please, go and read the whole thing. It';; be worth your time.
Sabrina McKinney
For the dear readers out there, I'm an old-fashioned sort of girl. Yes, I read the blogs, but I prefer to dig up news through the news outlets. Occasionally, a well-put together commentary post strikes my fancy. Today is one such day. Dean Barnett is is blogging alongside Hugh Hewitt, has an excellent piece regarding Mitt Romney. Here is a taste of it:
Good news for me! A day after I wrote that campaign ’06 can’t begin soon enough, I notice that National Review has run a cover of Mitt Romney and John McCain duking it out for the Republican nomination. Call it a double dose of good news. Not only has the campaign begun, but my preferred candidate, Mitt Romney, has been elevated to the semi-finals by the NR folks.
I know there are a lot of people who are wondering why this semi-obscure one-term governor of our nation’s bluest state has so knocked the conservative media on its collective tush. Indeed, it is a phenomenon. A long-standing Senator of impeccable conservative credentials like Sam Brownback throws his hat in the ring, and the conservative media yawns. And yet Mitt Romney has K-Lo and others panting in anticipation of a Romney administration...
...But Romney is different. First of all, he’s brilliant. When you spend even a little time with him, you see how his mind attacks a problem from every conceivable angle. This requires an intellectual curiosity and an intellectual industriousness that is foreign to nearly all of our politicians.
Second, he’s a profoundly decent man. All that stuff about what a perfect family he has and how committed he is to it isn’t a crock. And he’s really nice – his affability is no Clintonian act...
...On the issue of gays, I think there’s little inconsistency if any between his 1994 positions and his current ones. Romney has never been a hater – it’s simply not his style. One of his most prominent local critics, my one-time friend who later turned into a notorious crank, Brian Camenker, has complained on the dignified airs of The Daily Show that Romney was not only pro-gay in 1994, as governor his administration hired numerous homosexuals. The horror!
The controversy over this is that some can’t figure how Romney could treat gays as equals and still be against gay marriage. I don’t find that to be a particularly difficult brain-teaser unless you subscribe to the Andrew Sullivan theory that anyone who’s not eager to overturn millennia of marital traditions is by definition a latter day Bull Connor. Romney is against gay marriage but also for treating gays with dignity and respect; the two are not mutually exclusive...
...And yet he was pro-choice. It’s fair to ask, why? To get a good answer, you have to look at the times.
Romney in 1994 was running against Ted Kennedy. In 1994, Ted Kennedy was vulnerable. The Palm Beach non-rape scandal was still fresh in voters’ minds, and Kennedy’s brand of big government politics had fallen into disrepute. 1994 was a dreadful year for Democrats, so dreadful that even Ted Kennedy was in trouble. As late as September of that campaign year, Romney held a slight lead over Kennedy in the polls.
If Romney had run as pro-life, his campaign would have been a non-starter. He never would have had a chance. So, in my opinion, as a concession to reality, he ran with a “commitment to preserving a woman’s right to choose.” That’s the euphemism pro-life politicians used when they ran as pro-choice. While he defended the need for access to abortion services to assuage the jitters of Commonwealth voters, he never took up the morality of abortion during that election season.
Dean lays out the case very well, and he also points out why Sam Brownback isn't even a contender against a heavyweight like Romney. I am looking at a possible Romney/Pawlenty ticket while the kids believe he would be better suited with Giuliani teaming up with him. Either ticket isn't bad, and is sure to be a wrecking ball against whomever the Democrats decide to put up. Please, go and read the whole thing. It';; be worth your time.
Sabrina McKinney
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 2:47 PM
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