“If you can’t convince them, confuse them.” -President Harry S. Truman 33rd American President.
Mitt Romney came to New Hampshire Thursday and formally announced he will seek to unseat President Obama in 2012. Despite his formal announcement being overshadowed by Governor Sarah Palin’s visit, it’s official: Romney is in for 2012.
Can Romney win the nomination? The former Governor of the People’s Republic of Massachusetts has a very well-documented laundry list of problems. Romney supporters cringe at similarities between the Bay State’s health care program and Obamacare. Romney has shown himself to be a clear and unadulterated flip-flopper on the hot-button issues such as abortion, gun control, immigration, and gay rights.
In his 1994 bid for Senate, Romney said, “I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. I believe since Roe v. Wade has been the law in this country for 20 years, we should sustain and support it. I sustain that law and the right of a woman to make that choice…” Romney would ultimately go on to proclaim himself to be “pro-life.” The late Senator Edward Moore Kennedy, when campaigning against Romney in 1994, quipped, “(My opponent isn’t pro-choice or anti-choice, he’s multiple choice.”
Romney is the wrong candidate on Second Amendment issues. Unlike others, I would not say he flipped-flopped but nearly always did that which was politically expedient. In 1994 Romney supported the assault weapons ban, the Brady Bill and a waiting period and went on as Governor to sign one of the toughest pieces of assault weapons legislation in the country. Despite, Romney also having signed some favorable gun legislation measures into law as governor, his track record deems him unreliable to the pro-gun constituency. And just to be sure, shooting at a few rabbits as a youth and then shot gunning a quail on a game preserve no more makes him a hunter than petting a dog or a cat makes me a member of PETA. I am a hunter and I know a hunter when I meet one. Mitt Romney is no Hunter.
Romney once called Republican nominee McCain’s proposal on immigration reform, “Reasonable” yet railed against it as “Amnesty” a year later. Romney leave in his wake the same inconsistencies in response to Gay rights.
Finally, there is Romney-care. Romneycare has expanded health coverage to nearly all citizens of the people’s Republik, but with that has also come rising costs and reduced access to some of the best healthcare in the state. A $295 million budget shortfall is driven by upwards of $200 million in rising costs. It is also important to point out that the huge MassHealth program depends on 60 percent of its funding through subsidies from the federal government. This costs the Bay State about $10 billion out of its $27 billion annual budget!
Romney missed an opportunity. It might have been wise for him to simply assert that, as Governor he was facing a populace who overwhelmingly wanted this governmental cash cow and that as Governor he obliged. Now that it has been in place for five years, the nation has seen what an abysmal failure it is and MassHealth was a teachable moment. People might better accept a rethinking or revisiting of the concept, if Romney wasn’t such a flip-flopper. Romney however, defended the plan and sticks by it: his Achilles’ heel. If Romney garners the nomination I will be convinced that Eskimos will in fact buy ice.
