Here’s an ad that the Democrats have prepared to use if Romney becomes the nominee.
This is not the candidate we want.
Tag Archives: Mitt Romney
Rick Santorum exposes Mitt Romney’s record on gay rights in Iowa GOP primary debate
I wanted to wait until till Monday to post this make sure everyone saw this.
Excerpt:
After the debate, Romney issued a challenge that Santorum wouldn’t be able to find any respected legal authorities that would agree with his characterization of Romney’s culpability.
Romney, as he has been on so many other things over the years, is wrong.
When I contacted Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, for his response to the exchange, he sent me the following statement:
“Rick Santorum’s statement during the debate about Mitt Romney’s actions regarding same-sex marriage are correct. I litigated in Massachusetts by filing a suit in federal court to prevent the implementation of same-sex marriage. Due to federalism issues with the federal courts being asked to block a state court action, the federal courts were constrained not to get involved.
Having spent considerable time reviewing the Massachusetts Constitution, drafted by John Adams, I can say that the Massachusetts Constitution is unique with respect to marriage and domestic relations by vesting the authority over marriage to the Legislature. The provision is explicitly set forth in the Massachusetts Constitution. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the Legislature should act within a certain time to implement same-sex marriage, but the Legislature refused to act. Yet, Gov. Romney on his own went ahead of the Legislature and forced the implementation of same-sex marriage. Not only was he not required to implement same-sex marriage, the Massachusetts Constitution gave him no authority to do so. Gov. Romney should not have acted until the Legislature acted as that is the body vested by the Massachusetts Constitution with authority over marriage.
Sen. Rick Santorum was right and Gov. Mitt Romney was wrong.”
And more:
Likewise, Dr. Herb Titus was the founding dean of the School of Public Policy at Regent University, and later served as the founding dean of Regent Law School. Before that he studied under Dr. Francis Schaeffer, and graduated from Harvard Law School. Titus has worked with the U.S. Justice Department, and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. His book God, Man, and Law is a must-read for anyone interested in preserving the rule of law for the next generation.
I contacted Dr. Titus on Friday morning for his response to the Santorum-Romney exchange. He replied back with the following:
…I am a graduate of the Harvard Law School. I am an active member of the Virginia bar and the bar of a number of federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court. As a professor of constitutional law for nearly 30 years in four different ABA-approved law schools, and as a practicing lawyer, I have written a number of scholarly articles and legal briefs on a variety of constitutional subjects; including the nature of legislative, executive and judicial powers and the constitutional separation of those powers.
I am generally familiar with the Massachusetts Constitution, and especially familiar with that constitution’s provision dictating that no department shall exercise the powers that belong to either of the other two departments “to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.”
As Governor, Mr. Romney has claimed that he had no choice but to obey the Supreme Judicial Court’s opinion. This claim is false for several reasons….
The quote continues listing SIX REASONS why Romney did not have to issue the marriage licenses to gay couples. But he did it anyway.
Here’s a 2007 New York Times article to show that explains Romney’s real record.
Excerpt:
Mitt Romney seemed comfortable as a group of gay Republicans quizzed him over breakfast one morning in 2002. Running for governor of Massachusetts, he was at a gay bar in Boston to court members of Log Cabin Republicans.
Mr. Romney explained to the group that his perspective on gay rights had been largely shaped by his experience in the private sector, where, he said, discrimination was frowned upon. When the discussion turned to a court case on same-sex marriage that was then wending its way through the state’s judicial system, he said he believed that marriage should be limited to the union of a man and a woman. But, according to several people present, he promised to obey the courts’ ultimate ruling and not champion a fight on either side of the issue.
Got that? Mitt Romney isn’t going to fight anyone to protect traditional marriage.
More:
Jonathan Spampinato, a Republican activist who is openly gay and worked as Mr. Romney’s deputy political director during the run for governor, says he always felt that Mr. Romney was comfortable with gays. When it came to gay rights beyond the issue of marriage, Mr. Spampinato recalls, Mr. Romney asserted during that campaign that there was only the smallest difference between himself, a supporter of domestic partnership rights like survivorship and hospital visitation, and his Democratic opponent, Shannon O’Brien, who backed civil unions.
“He explained his position to Log Cabin club members early on,” Mr. Spampinato remembered, “by saying, ‘Regardless of what you call it, if you look at the benefits I support and the benefits Shannon supports, there’s probably a hair of difference.’ ”
[…]Recollections by gay Republicans whom Mr. Romney courted and worked with during his campaign for governor, and in his unsuccessful run for the Senate in 1994, produce a portrait of a man they genuinely saw as their partner in their fight for broader acceptance.
After the breakfast meeting in 2002, where the Log Cabin board unanimously decided to endorse him, he said in an interview with Bay Windows, a gay newspaper, that he would use his bully pulpit as governor to lobby legislators for domestic partnership benefits.
“Those kinds of things I think I can generate a great deal of public support for,” he said, “and therefore create pressure for legislators that otherwise might not think in those terms.”
And, in the aftermath of the Massachusetts court decision, Mr. Romney, though aligning himself with the supporters of a constitutional amendment, did order town clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Some members of Log Cabin Republicans say that in doing so, he ultimately fulfilled his promise to them despite his own moral objections.
Would Romney support legislation like ENDA, which would force Christian churches and ministries to hire gays?
“He couldn’t have been more kind and interested in understanding gay rights,” said Rich Tafel, who was executive director of Log Cabin’s national organization at the time. “He struck me as a business person who just wanted to understand this issue, and he wanted to communicate that he wasn’t antigay at all.”
Leaders of the group worked with Mr. Romney’s Senate campaign to draft a letter, which he eventually released, about his commitment to gay rights. He declared that he would go beyond Mr. Kennedy’s considerable record on the issue. He pledged his support for federal legislation that barred discrimination against gay men and lesbians in employment, and praised President Bill Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for the military as a first step toward “gays and lesbians being able to serve openly and honestly.”
Mitt Romney’s record shows strong support for abortion and gay rights. Whatever he says now when he is running for President doesn’t count – he’s been pro-abortion and pro-gay rights since 1994. Nothing he does while on the campaign trail should cause us to doubt his record.
RINO Mitt Romney deploys another RINO John Sununu to attack Newt Gingrich
Richard Miniter posted this Washington Post article on Facebook.
Excerpt:
In an effort to bring down surging front-runner Newt Gingrich, the Romney campaign has deployed a very strange choice of attack dog: former White House chief of staff John Sununu.
Sununu is everywhere these days. On a campaign conference call with reporters last week, he accused Gingrich of “a pattern of anti-principled actions that really irritated his own leadership and produced 88 percent of the Republicans in Congress voting for his reprimand.” On Sunday, the Romney campaign put him up against former Pennsylvania congressman Bob Walker on CNN’s “State of the Union,” where Sununu hit Gingrich for his “$500,000 outstanding bill at Tiffany’s” and warned, “The conservatives that he has turned his back on should recognize the fact that he’s not a conservative.” And this week, Sununu has begun hitting the airwaves on conservative talk radio, telling host Scott Hennen that Gingrich is “not stable.”
All of this raises a question: Has the Romney campaign lost its mind?
No doubt Sununu’s support is important for Romney in New Hampshire, where he was a popular governor in the 1980s and served as chairman of the state Republican Party from 2009-2011. But Sununu is a discredited figure among conservatives. To deploy him on the national stage — in an effort to convince conservatives that Gingrich is not one of them — is, quite simply, insanity.
The New Hampshire newspaper the Union Leader reports that Sununu said in an interview last week, “Then-House Minority Whip Gingrich reneged after telling then-President George H.W. Bush (41) that he approved of the 1990 budget agreement with Democrats that included tax increases.” This is supposed to show that Gingrich is an unreliable leader. Gingrich denies ever supporting the deal, but even so: Gingrich ended up on the right side — opposing the Bush tax increase, which is still reviled by conservatives to this day. So the Romney campaign is attacking Gingrich for opposing a massive tax increase — and is doing so by using the White House chief of staff who brokered the deal in which Bush broke his “no new taxes” pledge.
How on earth does trotting out the mastermind of Bush’s still-hated “read my lips” tax flip-flop to attack Gingrich help Romney? This is not territory where Team Romney should want to tread. Conservatives’ biggest worry is that Romney will flip-flop the way “41” did on his tax pledge. Sending out a man responsible for that reversal as a national spokesman only helps Gingrich and raises questions about Romney’s judgment.
[…]As White House chief of staff, Sununu spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars flying on military jets to ski lodges, golf resorts, and even his dentist in Boston, as well as taking a government limousine to New York to attend a Christie’s stamp auction. He was investigated by the White House counsel’s office and forced to repay the government. A few months later, he was forced to resign. The New York Times reported “The uproar over the 1990 budget deal, in which Mr. Sununu was seen by many Republican lawmakers as a malevolent influence, exacerbated Mr. Sununu’s troubles. In the same fashion, he was badly wounded by disclosures of his extensive use of military aircraft for personal and political trips.”
But it’s worse than that. John Sununu is the one responsible for recommending David Souter to then-President George H.W. Bush for a Supreme Court appointment.
The New York Times explains everything you need to now about John Sununu, (and, consequently, about Mitt Romney).
Excerpt:
John H. Sununu, the White House chief of staff, said today that he had assured President Bush that David H. Souter would uphold conservative values on the Supreme Court. He also said he had given ”strong personal support” to Judge Souter at a key moment in the President’s decision-making.
As Governor of New Hampshire, Mr. Sununu named Judge Souter an Associate Justice of its Supreme Court.
”I was looking for someone who would be a strict constructionist, consistent with basic conservative attitudes, and that’s what I got,” the chief of staff said in an interview. ”I was able to tell the President that I was sure he would do the same thing when he encountered Federal questions.
”What he says and does is what he is. No pretense, no surprises.” Their Kind of Man?
The chief of staff’s comments were designed to advance the overall White House strategy of seeking to convince conservatives that Judge Souter was their kind of man, who could be trusted to vote ”right” on the big issues, without getting him involved in fierce debates about abortion or flag burning or other contentious specifics.
[…]Mr. Sununu said that President Bush had had two candidates under consideration when he retired to his office on Monday with a yellow legal pad to make his decision – the two he had just spoken with, Judge Souter and Judge Edith H. Jones, 41, who sits on the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in Houston.
Let me tell you something. I am a strong conservative on fiscal issues, foreign policy and social issues. My candidates for President in 2012 are Michele Bachmann, followed by Rick Santorum, followed by Rick Perry. And if I had a choice to nominate anyone to be on the Supreme Court of the United States, the last person in the world that I would choose is David Souter, and the first person in the world I would choose is Edith H. Jones. She is my absolute favorite for the Supreme Court, followed closely by Janice Rogers Brown.
I recommended Jones and Brown in this old post from May 2009, and nothing has changed since then – they are my favorites. But John Sununu passed on Edith Jones and recommended David Souter – a staunchly liberal activist judge. Sununu is not a conservative.
If you would like to see some videos of Mitt Romney explaining his liberal views on everything from abortion to gun control to global warming, then click here.
WINTERY KNIGHT 