Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

Does Mitt Romney’s Romneycare health care plan fund abortion with taxpayer dollars?

Fred Thompson made the point about Romneycare and abortion during the 2008 campaign, and Politifact agreed with Fred’s charge against Romney.

Excerpt:

Fred Thompson’s campaign is trying to take the much-touted health insurance program that Mitt Romney helped create as governor of Massachusetts and turn it into a liability with conservative Republican voters who dominate the party’s primary elections.

The Thompson campaign, which has been playing up the former U.S. senator’s antiabortion stances, sent out this e-mail in November 2007:

“So what sort of services does Romney’s health care plan provide? Per the state Web site: $50 co-pay for abortions.

“While court mandate requires Massachusetts to cover ‘medically necessary’ abortions in state-subsidized health plans, Mitt Romney’s plan covers ALL abortions — no restrictions.”

And it’s true.

One of the crowning moments of Mitt Romney’s tenure as governor of Massachusetts was the creation of Commonwealth Care, a state-run, state-subsidized health insurance program for people making up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level. Although private insurers provide the coverage, the state helps pay the bills and determines what services must be covered.

That list includes abortion. And the co-pay is indeed $50.

Romney has recently sought to distance himself from some details of the plan, but he has touted it in debates and interviews as a model for the nation.

“I love it. It’s a fabulous program,” Romney said during a May 3, 2007, Republican debate in Simi Valley, Calif. “Now I know there’s some people who wonder about it. Sen. Kennedy at the signing of the bill, we were all there together, he said, ‘You know, if you’ve got Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy agreeing to the same bill, that means one thing — one of us didn’t read it.’

[…]Although Romney shares responsiblity with the state legislature and the program’s board, Commonwealth Care was his pet project, and he takes credit for it. We find Thompson’s claims true.

Those are the facts. Romney may say he is pro-life, but he doesn’t have the record of pro-life activism of Rick Santorum, or even the good pro-life voting record of Newt Gingrich.

Many more details of Romneycare and abortion here.

Watch Mitt Romney explain his views on abortion and stem cell research in his own words.

Newt Gingrich slams Jon King for leftist media bias in CNN debate

This video clip from the opening of the debate is 3 minutes, and Newt got a standing ovation.

Newt’s daughters seem to like him.

More Newt from the debate:

More Newt:

Newt’s conclusion:

Newt is mainting his 6 point lead over Romney in the latest South Carolina Republican primary poll. (Released Thursday night)

Excerpt:

Thursday may have been one of the most eventful days of the Republican campaign so far, but the state of the race in South Carolina didn’t change much. Newt Gingrich continues to lead Mitt Romney by 6 points, 35-29, with Ron Paul and Rick Santorum each tied for third at 15%.

Revelations from the Marianne Gingrich interview haven’t taken a toll on Newt’s image yet. For the first time in our South Carolina tracking this month his favorability is better than Romney’s, with 53% of voters holding a positive opinion of him compared to 51% for his chief competitor.

Gingrich’s lead with evangelicals held steady today at 40-22 over Romney. He’s also doing well with Tea Party voters (46-21), registered Republicans (38-30), voters describing themselves as very conservative (41-21), men (39-27), and voters in the Upstate (36-25).

Romney is leading with non-evangelicals (39-30), independents (30-26), moderates (44-23), and women (32-31). The problem for him is that all of those groups are a minority within the South Carolina Republican electorate.

Both Gingrich (81%) and Romney (79%) have supporters who are pretty firmly committed to them. 81% of Paul’s supporters say they’ll definitely vote for him as well.  Santorum has the voters most likely to abandon him for one of the more viable contenders in the final 36 hours, with 32% of them saying they could end up voting for someone else.  Gingrich is the second choice of 45% of Santorum voters open to changing their minds, compared to 22% for Romney.

Things look good for Newt.  He has the lead, his support seems to have more room to grow than Romney’s, and so far he’s not seeing any ill effects from his ex-wife going to the media.  It’s important to note though that many average South Carolina voters- the non-political junkies- will get their first exposure to the Marianne Gingrich story in the morning paper or on the news sometime tomorrow.  That may or may not end up having a big impact on his numbers. But it’s important to keep in mind.

PPP surveyed 836 likely Republican primary voters on January 18th and 19th. The margin of error for the survey is +/-3.4%.

Here are the last few polls:

South Carolina President
Insider Advantage
1/18 – 1/18
Romney 29
Gingrich 32
Paul 15
Santorum 11
Perry 3
South Carolina President
Rasmussen Reports
1/18 – 1/18
Romney 31
Gingrich 33
Paul 15
Santorum 11
Perry 2
South Carolina President
PPP (D)
1/18 – 1/18
Romney 28
Gingrich 34
Paul 15
Santorum 14
Perry 5

I think at this point, it may be an all hands on deck situation to keep Romney out of the nomination.

John Hawkins writes the most scathing anti-Romney column EVER

Quin Hillyer of the American Spectator linked to the Anti-Romney post, and he called it “The Most Scathing Anti-Romney Column, Ever”. The actual title of the post is “Five Ways Conservatives Will Have to Sell Their Souls if Romney Wins”.

Excerpt:

If you were trying to come up with the most atrocious candidate imaginable to go toe-to-toe with Barack Obama in 2012, you couldn’t do much better than Mitt Romney. He was an unpopular moderate governor who lost 2 out of the 3 major elections he’s run in and whose signature issue Romneycare is an enormous failure. Moreover, he’s so uninspiring that he makes Bob Dole look like Ronald Reagan and that’s before you consider his incessant flip-flopping that makes it impossible to really know where he stands on any issue.

Romney’s candidacy also runs counter to almost every political trend in the book right now. He’s the antithesis of everything the Tea Party stands for — a moderate establishment-endorsed, principle-free Rockefeller Republican. On the other hand, he’s like a bad guy straight out of central casting for the Occupy Wall Street crowd, a conscience-free 1 percenter who makes $10,000 bets and lectures the public about how corporations are people — while hordes of poor and middle class Americans that he fired trail in his wake telling tales of woe about how Romney made their lives into a living hell.

At one time, I thought both Gingrich and Perry were more electable than Romney. I have, however, reassessed and now believe Gingrich, Perry, Santorum, and even Huntsman, who just left the race, are ALL more electable than Mitt. It’s also worth noting that all of those candidates, including Huntsman, are more conservative than Romney. It’s mind-boggling to consider the fact that if Romney wins, the conservative base will have chosen the guy behind Romneycare over the man behind the Contract with America, America’s premier social conservative, and the best job-creating governor in America, all of whom would also be more electable.

Here we are in what may be, forgive me for the cliché, the most important election of our lifetimes and the GOP may end up choosing a candidate who’s one part Charlie Crist and one part John Kerry as our nominee. If that’s the case, conservatives should certainly vote for him over Obama. After all, Mitt Romney will undoubtedly often do the wrong thing if he becomes President, but Barack Obama will almost always fail the country. So Romney would definitely be the lesser of two evils.

Yet and still, conservatives will probably have to pay a big price if Romney becomes the nominee. Barring an unforeseen miracle, we’re not going to see someone who was a third rate, unpopular moderate governor become a great, popular, and conservative President. The idea that Republicans in Congress will keep Romney in line isn’t borne out by anything that has happened in the last decade. During the Bush years, time and time again, conservatives in Congress abandoned their principles to follow Bush’s lead. It has been much the same under Obama. Many Democrats were willing to take votes that ended their careers because they felt compelled to stick by Barack. Mitt would have little to fear from the Tea Party or the rest of the conservative base either. After all, his thinking will be, if grassroots conservatives still had any sway in the Republican Party, he wouldn’t be the nominee. What are they going to do after he gets the nomination? Vote for Obama? Same goes if he gets elected. No matter how Nixonian Mitt turns out to be, conservatives will still view our own Massachusetts version of Arnold Schwarzenegger as preferable to whatever socialist the Democrats run against him in 2016.

ANNOUNCEMENT: I am now cross-posting some of my posts at John Hawkins’ Right Wing News, since he gave me permission to guest blog there. Right Wing News is one of the top conservative blogs.