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Green socialists backing Romney campaign with huge donations

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From the leftist Politico. (H/T Doug Ross)

Excerpt:

Will Mitt Romney flip-flop on climate change if he’s elected president?

Some big donors are betting on it.

Romney and his super PAC have taken millions from funders with strong green streaks — despite the fact that the former Massachusetts governor has run to the right in the primary, proclaiming doubts about global-warming science and trashing President Barack Obama’s greenhouse gas emissions policies.

Julian Robertson, founder of the Tiger Management hedge fund, helped put cap-and-trade legislation on the map with $60 million in contributions over the past decade to the Environmental Defense Fund.

Now, Robertson has given $1.25 million to Romney’s Restore our Future super PAC, plus the maximum $2,500 to the Romney campaign.

Other green-minded financial backers may not be giving as much as Robertson, but they still share the view that climate-change science and a solid environmental agenda wouldn’t be a lost cause if Romney won the White House.

“My feeling is that on these issues that people learn,” said former Gov. Thomas Kean (R-N.J.), who maxed out last fall to Romney with a $2,500 check. “And my hope is, as time goes on, he will understand that not everybody agrees on how you deal with these issues, but I hope he will agree with 99 percent of the scientists who believe this is an issue that we have to deal with.”

As president, Kean said he hoped Romney could duplicate his Beacon Hill successes in building coalitions with Democrats on issues such as energy and the environment. In addition, Kean noted that Romney wouldn’t face the same gridlocked climate debate of recent years, in large part because of the boom in domestic natural gas production that’s helped lower the nation’s greenhouse gas emission levels. “The whole game has changed,” Kean said.

Rob Sisson, president of the Republicans for Environmental Protection, said he’s scraping together personal funds to write a check to the Romney campaign after getting a chance to meet him for the first time last month during a town hall campaign stop in Kalamazoo, Mich.

“I think his record as governor was pretty good as far as Republicans go,” said Sisson, who also gave $1,000 last June to Jon Huntsman’s campaign. “I really get the sense from him and the folks around him with whom I’ve spoken that as president he’d really look at each situation, gather the data and really make a decision that’s best for the country.”

“If that goes against the grain of how he’s campaigning now, so be it,” Sisson added. “He’s going to be driven by data and facts and not emotions and getting pushed into one corner by one faction of the party.”

Among the other green Romney donors is Texas businessman and philanthropist Trammell S. Crow, founder of Earth Day Dallas and winner of the Republicans for Environmental Protection’s Green Elephant Award in 2007. Crow and his family have given $71,000 this cycle to Republicans, including $15,000 to the Republican National Committee and $5,000 to Romney, according to donation data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

“I am voting for Mitt Romney and I believe in global warming,” Crow said in a statement to POLITICO.

Please see below for more of Obama’s disturbingly liberal positions.

Mitt Romney

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Mitt Romney’s record as governor is pro-abortion and pro-socialized medicine

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Byron York explains Mitt Romney’s liberal record as governor of Massachusetts.

Excerpt:

To win election as a Republican in Massachusetts, and then to govern effectively, Romney had to align himself with the left side of the GOP. And to do that, he adopted positions that haunt him still.

Perhaps the most fateful was on abortion. Romney’s reputation as a “perfectly lubricated weather vane” — to use the memorable phrase of former rival Jon Huntsman — comes from his decision to run for Senate in 1994 and governor in 2002 as a strongly pro-choice candidate, and then to run for president in 2008 as a strongly pro-life candidate.

According to a new book by Boston journalist Ron Scott, when Romney was planning that ’94 Senate run, he commissioned polling that showed a pro-life candidate could not win statewide election in Massachusetts. So Romney, who said he was personally pro-life, became politically pro-choice.

And not just pro-choice, but ardently pro-choice. “I am not going to change our pro-choice laws in Massachusetts in any way,” Romney said in an Oct. 29, 2002, debate. “I will preserve them. I will protect them. I will enforce them. I do not take the position of a pro-life candidate. I am in favor of preserving and protecting a woman’s right to choose.” When The Boston Globe said there was not a “paper’s width” of difference between Romney and his Democratic opponent on abortion, Romney proudly quoted the paper.

If Romney had chosen a less liberal state to live in, he would not have had to do that — and, of course, he would not have had to switch back to a pro-life position in 2004-2005, as he formed a political action committee and began working toward a run for the Republican nomination for president.

As a candidate for office in Massachusetts, Romney also had to take positions on guns, global warming and gay rights that later caused him difficulties in Republican presidential politics. He even had to renounce Ronald Reagan — an extremely unwise thing to do in today’s GOP. “Look, I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush,” Romney said in a 1994 debate with Sen. Ted Kennedy. “I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.” Now, of course, Romney sings Reagan’s praises at nearly every campaign stop.

If he hadn’t run in Massachusetts, he wouldn’t have had to bash Reagan in the first place.

But, after abortion, the most devastating consequence of Romney’s choosing Massachusetts has been the issue of universal health care. In extending coverage to everyone in the state, Romney helped fulfill a long-time liberal goal; just look at the love-fest with Kennedy at the bill’s 2006 signing ceremony. But Romney did not effectively control rapidly rising health care costs. And he could not have anticipated how deeply unpopular universal coverage schemes would become with the Republican base after Obamacare.

In the campaign, Romney has blamed the Democratic Massachusetts legislature for Romneycare’s problems and denied vigorously that he believes his bill would be a good model for the nation. It’s a difficult position to take on his signature achievement in office. And it would not have happened had Romney not chosen to run in Massachusetts.

We can’t afford to run a moderate against Barack Obama – Obama is going to win because he will just point out that Romney agreed with him on everything when he was governor of Massachusetts. Republican voters are pro-life and we oppose government-run health care. we need to elect someone who has a Republican record.

 

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RINO Mitt Romney now open to European-style VAT tax

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ABC News reports.

Excerpt:

In a December 24 story in the Wall Street Journal, Romney is described not favoring the idea of “layering a VAT onto the current income tax system. But he adds that, philosophically speaking, a VAT might work as a replacement for some part of the tax code, ‘particularly at the corporate level,’ as Paul Ryan proposed several years ago. What he doesn’t do is rule a VAT out.”

A value added tax, or VAT, is a form of the consumption tax in which the tax is levied based on a product’s price, not including the cost of materials, that originated in and is popular in Europe, imposed by the European Commission, and the governments of France and the UK, among others.

Gingrich’s campaign was not the only one to notice. The American Enterprise Institution‘s James Pethokoukis wrote that “(m)any conservatives/libertarians simply hate, hate, hate the idea of a VAT….They view it as a way to fund a massive expansion of government. I would be surprised if those quotes don’t end up in a 30-second, anti-Romney ad in Iowa or New Hampshire”

Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist once called the VAT “a European-style sales tax. It’s assessed on the profits generated at every stage of production (raw material, manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer, etc.), so there is constant reporting and payment. As such, it’s an extremely efficient money machine for big government. The VAT is embedded inside the price of a good … As such, people forget they pay it, and European governments have found it too easy to raise the tax repeatedly over time.”

People think that Romney should be the candidate because he “is the most electable”. But is that true?

Seven reasons why Romney’s electability is exaggerated

John Hawkins writing for Townhall.com lists the seven reasons. (H/T Right Wing News)

Reasons 2 and 3:

2) He’s a proven political loser: There’s a reason Mitt Romney has been able to say that he’s “not a career politician.” It’s because he’s not very good at politics. He lost to Ted Kennedy in 1994. Although he did win the governorship of Massachusetts in 2002, he did it without cracking 50% of the vote. Worse yet, he left office as the 48th most popular governor in America and would have lost if he had run again in 2006. Then, to top that off, he failed to capture the GOP nomination in 2008. This time around, despite having almost every advantage over what many people consider to be a weak field of candidates, Romney is still desperately struggling. Choosing Romney as the GOP nominee after running up that sort of track record would be like promoting a first baseman hitting .225 in AAA to the majors.

3) Running weak in the southern states: Barack Obama won North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida in 2008 and you can be sure that he will be targeting all three of those states again. This is a problem for Romney because he would be much less likely than either Gingrich or Perry to carry any of those states. Moderate northern Republicans have consistently performed poorly in the south and Romney won’t be any exception. That was certainly the case in 2008 when both McCain and Huckabee dominated Romney in primaries across the south. Mitt didn’t win a single primary in a southern state and although he finished second in Florida, he wasn’t even competitive in North Carolina or Virginia. Since losing any one of those states could be enough to hand the election to Obama in a close race, Mitt’s weakness there is no small matter.

For my own part, I find it surprising that people who are ostensibly pro-life are willing to appoint a Republican candidate who has no pro-life record. Until he started running for the Presidency, Mitt Romney was 100% pro-abortion. That’s 12 years of abortion advocacy. His record is pro-abortion. Many of the other candidates, especially Santorum and Bachmann, have a pro-life record. Newt has a 98% pro-life voting record. So why are we settling for someone who has a question mark on social issues?