Thursday, October 11, 2012

It's time for a Romney reflective flash button


My modest collection of political memorabilia includes one of those reflective  flash buttons from the 1968 presidential campaign. If you tilt it slightly one way or the other either Hubert Humphrey or Ed Muskie, the Democratic ticket, will appear.

I think there may be a growing market for a Romney flash button  that will show him in profile, facing one way or the other.    There is nothing sharply in focus on which way he is headed on many of the major issues, so it's up to you to decide which Romney is reflecting his true visceral  positions.

The latest word on his meandering positions on abortion supports that point.  Consider this:

Mitt, in Delaware, Oh. - "I think I've said time and again.  I'm a pro-life candidate and I'll be  pro-life president,"  His first bold move, he said,  would be to deny federal funding to Planned Parenthood.

Mitt, in Des Moines Iowa, a day earlier:  "There's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda."

Still earlier, he has said he would be delighted to sign  legislation as president to ban abortion.

Hold it right there, folks.  Isn't this the same Mitt Romney who as goverrnor  was vigorously pro-choice?

That's what I've been told.



1 comment:

David Hess said...

It's one thing for a politician, over time and from experience, to change his/her mind about where he/she stands on a particular issue. It's quite another for him/her to simultaneously adopt contradictory stances on an issue on the same day or just weeks apart. Either that candidate believes that a typical American voter's memory is totally slack or that it's perfectly proper to pander to different audiences. Not just on the abortion issue, Gov. Romney has become an Etch-a-Sketch caricature on a wide range of topics, a pattern in large part rooted in a desperate quest for votes in a manner that would not offend his right-wing base whose monetary support he needs but whose social and economic views are anathema to millions of others. Tactically, his fluid and shifting positions could signal not as much a lack of conviction as leaving all his options open should he somehow win the election. If I were one of his right-wing donors, particularly one who had invested big money in his campaign, I'd begin to be wary of what he really stands for.