Tag: Mitt Romney

Delivering the goods on Romney

I have to agree with the Outraged Liberal — today’s installment of the Globe’s Romney series, by Brian Mooney, really delivers the goods.

Here are a couple of highlights that the O.L. doesn’t mention. First, this ought to negate any lingering belief that Romney cut taxes in Massachusetts — or even held them steady:

Data compiled by The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, shows that during Romney’s four years as governor, the state and local tax burden in Massachusetts increased from 10 percent to 10.6 percent of per capita income.

Next, consider what William Monahan tells Mooney. Monahan is described as having had a “long personal and political relationship” with Romney, but the governor pushed him out as chairman of the state’s Civil Service Commission because he had bought property from organized-crime figure Jerry Angiulo 23 years earlier. Mooney writes:

That night, from his lake house in Wolfeboro, N.H., Romney called Monahan, who quoted him as saying: ”Bill, my stomach is turning…. My senior staff is unanimous that I have to ask for your resignation. I don’t want to do this, but I am outvoted.”

I don’t want to do this, but I am outvoted. Absolutely amazing.

According to the Herald, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is now on Romney’s case, too.

Lenore Romney and abortion rights

Part four of the Globe’s series on Mitt Romney flatly asserts that a family tragedy led his mother, Lenore Romney, to favor abortion rights in her 1970 run for the U.S. Senate. Neil Swidey and Stephanie Ebbert write about the stance Mitt Romney took in his own Senate run in 1994:

Although he always said he was personally opposed to abortion, Romney sought to reassure Massachusetts voters of his pro-choice bona fides by citing his mother’s example. Lenore had run for the Senate on an abortion-rights platform, a stance forged by the death of her son-in-law’s teenage sister from an illegal abortion.

”My mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter,” Romney declared. ”And you will not see me wavering on that.”

Note how the sentence I’ve boldfaced is constructed — as a straight declaration of fact, with no attribution. Yet that statement has come under question in the past.

In June 2005, Globe columnist Eileen McNamara reported there was little evidence to suggest that Lenore Romney, who died in 1998, had spoken out in favor of abortion rights during her unsuccessful campaign.

In response to McNamara’s column, Romney released a statement that encompassed what his mother had said at the time. Among other things, Lenore Romney said: “I support and recognize the need for more liberal abortion rights while reaffirming the legal and medical measures needed to protect the unborn and pregnant woman [sic].”

The Globe rightly observed, “It was not clear what specific positions Lenore Romney was advocating in the statement.” And, oh yeah, the reporter was Stephanie Ebbert.

Given that the Globe is asking us to wade through some 35,000 words on Romney this week, you’d think that it could remind us there’s some disagreement over how he characterized his mother’s beliefs — especially since that disagreement plays into the criticism that Romney will say anything to advance his ambitions.

All known facts

If your heart sank this morning when you encountered part one of the Globe’s seven-day, all-known-facts package on Mitt Romney, imagine how we felt at Media Nation Central. After all, you don’t have to read it. I do. And though today’s nearly-5,000-word entry, by Neil Swidey and Michael Paulson, is surprisingly sprightly, the purpose of such presidential profiles is strictly defense: by next Saturday, if the Globe has done its job, there won’t be a single Mitt tidbit for the national media to pick up on that the Globe didn’t have first.

Online, what’s notable is how far the Globe has come since its big John Kerry special of a few years ago. I can no longer find the Kerry stuff in order to make a direct comparison, but the Romney package strikes me as far richer, with a Web-only Paulson story on young Romney’s near-fatal car accident in France, where he was a Mormon missionary; an interactive Google map of France; a Michael Kranish piece on Romney’s draft deferral; a slew of photos and documents, even one of Romney’s report cards (PDF); and several videos, including this fairly creepy look at how Romney’s appearance has changed over the years. Given this cynical foolishness, I especially enjoyed a video of Romney speaking French.

Just remember: Packages like this are meant more to be admired than read. I’ll be reading. And if find anything startling, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Megadittos on Leibovich II

Jay Garrity, the Mitt Romney aide who New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich says pulled him over and claimed to have run his license plate, is now under investigation in both Massachusetts (for allegedly impersonating a state trooper) and New Hampshire (for the Leibovich incident). Nice people you have working for you, Mitt.

Megadittos on Leibovich

Just a brief note on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s denial that one of his goons — uh, aides — tried to intimidate New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich as Leibovich trailed the Mittmobile in his car.

Like Jon Keller, who provides the relevant links, I worked with Leibovich at the Boston Phoenix in the early 1990s. And I endorse this Keller observation: “If Mark Leibovich says it happened that way, it happened exactly that way.”

This isn’t a big deal. Why can’t Romney tell the truth?

McCain and abortion rights

Scott Helman’s story in today’s Globe about Republican flip-floppers only provides a hint of Sen. John McCain’s tortured history with respect to abortion rights. Helman, whose intent is to show that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is not the only GOP flip-flopper, writes this about McCain:

McCain has also made conflicting comments about whether he believes Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, should be overturned. He told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999 that he did not support a repeal. But earlier this year, speaking to about 800 people in Spartanburg, S.C., he sought to assure conservatives that he did.

“I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned,” McCain said, according to the Associated Press.

That’s true, as far as it goes. But McCain did not wait eight years to renounce his 1999 remarks about Roe v. Wade, as you might be led to believe from Helman’s article; in fact, he started backpeddling almost immediately. Yet even though McCain had been a pro-life conservative for his entire political career, he was never quite able to reassure the right during the 2000 presidential campaign. Every time he opened his mouth about abortion, he committed a gaffe, defined by Michael Kinsley as when a politician accidentally tells the truth.

Consider, for example, a Robert Novak column from Aug. 26, 1999, shortly after the Chronicle reported McCain’s seeming change of heart. (I couldn’t find the original Chronicle article.) Novak began thusly:

Perhaps spending the day with rich, liberal northern California Republicans, who cannot win elections but contribute lots of money, had its impact on Sen. John McCain. That is the only plausible explanation for his telling the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board last week that “certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade.”

“It was a mistake, a terrible mistake,” a McCain adviser told me, contradicting his presidential campaign’s official line that the senator’s opposition to abortion had not diminished (using the old saw that his remarks were taken out of context). McCain spent the weekend trying to straighten out his position, and was still sculpting his language Tuesday, five days after his first remarks.

McCain’s mistake was explained privately by supporters as common to Republican politicians who don’t care much or know much about abortion. They try to please both grass roots, pro-life activists and the well-heeled, pro-choice campaign contributors, in abundance last Thursday when McCain addressed San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club. But it is a special problem for McCain. Waffling on abortion confirms his developing image as the most liberal Republican candidate, which might give him momentary pleasure as runner-up, but deny him ultimate satisfaction as the nominee.

McCain’s abortion problem was no mere slip in San Francisco. His staff knew he blundered and sought quick correction. Appearing Sunday on CNN’s “Late Edition,” he no longer mentioned “the long term,” but still opposed getting rid of Roe v. Wade “immediately.” That didn’t work either. Later that day, he issued a written statement: “I have always believed in the importance of the repeal of Roe v. Wade, and as president I would work toward its repeal.”

But in both Sunday’s CNN interview and his written statement he repeated the canard that immediate repeal “would force thousands of young women to undergo dangerous and illegal operations.”

After much polishing by his staff, McCain sent a letter to the Right to Life Committee on Tuesday, affirming his desire to overturn Roe v. Wade, with not one word about “dangerous and illegal operations.”

I caught a glimpse of McCain’s attempts to have it both ways in February 2000, when I spent several days following McCain and George W. Bush around South Carolina in the run-up to their pivotal primary. Among other things, McCain was desperately trying to stress his conservative credentials after allowing himself to be portrayed as a moderate in libertarian New Hampshire, where he had handily defeated Bush.

Unfortunately, I didn’t quote McCain on abortion rights, so I can’t report exactly what he said. But I did write this, about an appearance McCain made on MSNBC’s “Hardball” at Clemson University: “McCain stressed his archconservative stand on social issues including gay marriage (‘it’s crazy’), abortion rights (he hopes the Supreme Court will someday overturn Roe v. Wade), and affirmative action (he’s staunchly against quotas).”

As I also wrote at the time, McCain was in trouble with the right for answering a hypothetical question about his 15-year-old daughter’s becoming pregnant by saying it would be her decision whether to have an abortion. He later “corrected” it by saying it would be a family decision.

The point of Helman’s story in today’s Globe is certainly valid: McCain and Rudy Giuliani, no less than Romney, have changed their minds on key issues as they seek the Republican nomination for president. Romney himself went after his two chief rivals earlier this week; Helman cites an Associated Press report in which Romney criticized McCain’s one-time opposition to overturning Roe v. Wade. The former governor said:

Senator McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts. Now he’s for them. He was opposed to ethanol. Now he’s for it. He said he was opposed to overturning Roe v. Wade. Now he’s for overturning Roe v. Wade…. That suggests that he has learned from experience.

So why does the flip-flopper charge seem to stick to Romney more than it does to his rivals? Republican operative Roger Stone tells Helman:

I think you can certainly move your political positions within a career and even within a campaign, but when you trade in your old philosophy for a new one, and you did it overnight across the board, it smacks of opportunism.

Well, yeah. I don’t think I can recall a politician who has so conveniently and quickly done a 180 on a whole range of social and cultural issues in order to repackage himself for a different audience and a different audience. Yes, they all do it to some degree, but Romney is unique in his thoroughness, moving from socially moderate — even liberal — to ultraconservative virtually overnight.

McCain is another matter. Eight years ago he failed in his attempts simultaneously to appease conservatives and moderates. This time, he’s falling short in his efforts to move to the right and stay there. Of course, as McCain himself has said repeatedly, he probably has no chance unless the war in Iraq — his main issue — starts to look like a winner. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be much chance of that.

Patrick versus Romney

Much comment out there about the Globe’s poll regarding Gov. Deval Patrick’s first 100 days in office, as well as a similar State House News Service poll. The Outraged Liberal: It could be worse. Hub Politics: Actually, it couldn’t be much worse. Blue Mass Group: It’s pretty good! David Bernstein: It’s pretty bad, but don’t write Deval off.

What’s missing from all this is context. How is Patrick doing compared to Mitt Romney at a similar point in his term? Media Nation comes to the rescue. It turns out that the Globe conducted an almost-identical poll in April 2003 (online here; scroll down), around the time Romney had been governor for 100 days. What follows are some numbers from both Globe surveys.

Personal popularity

  • Romney: 55 percent positive; 32 percent negative
  • Patrick: 63 percent positive; 25 percent negative

Job performance

  • Romney: 55 percent positive; 39 percent negative
  • Patrick: 48 percent positive; 33 percent negative

State of the state

  • Romney: 39 percent, right track; 47 percent, wrong track
  • Patrick: 44 percent, right track; 56 percent, wrong track

Budget leadership

  • Romney: 51 percent, approve; 40 percent, disapprove
  • Patrick: 56 pecent, approve; 30 percent, disapprove

Much as I’d like to make more comparisons, the tabular data from 2003 are not online.

So what can we learn from the Romney-Patrick smackdown? At roughly the same point in their governorships, they were in a similar position with respect to public perceptions. Patrick is better liked. Although a higher percentage of respondents approved of Romney’s job performance, a higher percentage disapproved, too. Apparently more people are watching and waiting with Patrick.

Each governor dug himself into something of a hole rather quickly. As we know, Romney never dug himself out — and, after a while, he stopped trying, as he decided to run for president by making fun of Massachusetts rather than govern.

Despite Patrick’s stumbles coming out of the gate (some real, some media hooey), he seems genuinely dedicated to trying to do a good job. The relatively high marks he receives for managing the budget put him in a decent position from which to mount a comeback. And he has a reservoir of goodwill on which to draw.

But what about 2002?

Scott Helman of the Boston Globe weighs in today with a curious — or perhaps I should say incurious — profile of Peter Flaherty, who is described as Mitt Romney’s “go-to guy for conservatives.”

Romney, of course, has engendered considerable skepticism on the right with his shift from moderate to conservative on social issues, especially abortion and gay rights. Flaherty’s job is to tell conservatives that Romney’s conversion is sincere and not a matter of mere political expediency.

Flaherty’s key talking point: “Obviously I’ve got to believe he’s for real, or I wouldn’t be wasting my time.”

Trouble is, the only evidence Helman cites that Romney used to be a moderate dates back to 1994, and to that illuminating YouTube video of Romney trying to out-liberal Ted Kennedy during their Faneuil Hall debate for the U.S. Senate. There’s no question that Romney has moved well to the right since then.

But there’s also no question that Romney has moved well to the right since 2002, when he ran for governor as a moderate — and, significantly, when Flaherty went to work for him, according to Helman’s story.

Take, for instance, this AP story from October 2002 in which Romney’s then-running mate, Kerry Healey, defended her boss as being every bit as pro-choice as his Democratic rival: “There isn’t a dime of difference between Mitt Romney’s position on choice and Shannon O’Brien.” Romney himself said that he “will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose … I will not change any provisions in Massachusetts’ pro-choice laws.”

Or consider that in 2002 Romney opposed a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. Or that, also in 2002, his campaign distributed pink-colored fliers at Gay Pride that read, “Mitt and Kerry wish you a great Pride weekend! All citizens deserve equal rights, regardless of their sexual preference.”

Which brings us back to Flaherty, who defends Romney’s conservative credentials on the grounds that he wouldn’t waste his time working for someone who did not genuinely hold such views. The obvious question is why Flaherty was so willing to waste his time in 2002.

It depends on what “devout” means

David Kravitz of Blue Mass Group thinks the media may be wrong in describing Mitt Romney as a “devout” Mormon. In a commentary on Jacob Weisberg’s recent Mormon-bashing piece in Slate, Kravitz writes:

Although Romney is routinely described by others as a “devout Mormon,” I could not find (via a couple of Google searches) an instance where he has described himself that way. So, is that description of him truth, or truthiness? Like everything else about what Mitt Romney actually believes, it’s hard to tell.

Oh, David. Try a Google search for “Mitt Romney” and “bishop.” Here are a few examples for you:

  • The Boston Phoenix: “A former venture capitalist and Mormon bishop, Romney unsuccessfully challenged Ted Kennedy in a 1994 Senate campaign and then rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah — the Vatican of Mormonism — from certain disaster before being elected governor here.”
  • Associated Press: “Romney was a bishop — the Mormon equivalent of a pastor — in the early 1980s and served as president of a collection of Boston area churches in the late 80s and early 90s.”
  • Reuters: “A devout Mormon and former bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Romney — the son of former Michigan Gov. George Romney — has several advantages, political analysts say.“

Question: Is it possible be a non-devout bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Answer: It’s hard to imagine.

I’m not saying I agree with Weisberg that Romney’s religion should disqualify him from the presidency. But Kravitz shouldn’t kid himself about Romney’s beliefs, any more than he should have kidded himself about the trustworthiness of the Massachusetts Legislature in the recent same-sex-marriage debate.