Failed GOP presidential nominee and newly minted Utah senator Mitt Romney couldn’t even wait until he was sworn into office before he submitted his anti-Trump editorial to the vehemently anti-Trump Washington Post.
Despite his public image as a wholesome and honest man, an image that he has labored indefatigably to craft, Romney is, in truth, the embodiment of all that is wrong and bad with the Republican Party and, by extension, the conservative movement.
In other words, for as reprehensible as so-called “RINOs” undoubtedly are, few are as contemptible as is Romney.
In fact, it is worse than this: Romney embodies all that is wrong with American politics.
When John Kerry ran against George W. Bush in 2004, his Republican opponents in D.C. and the conservative media successfully, and accurately, branded him a “flip-flopper.” Yet with respect to flip-flopping on political issues, Kerry was a piker relative to Romney. Kerry at least never pretended to be anything other than the New England, “liberal” Democrat that he has always been.
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Romney, in glaring contrast, though always self-identifying as a Republican, has oscillated on key issues from one position to the next, depending on what he thought would serve his political interests.
Abortion
When Romney ran for the presidency in 2008 and 2012, he exhausted himself assuring the GOP base that he was an opponent of abortion. Yet for most of his career, not only has Romney been a proponent of “women’s choice;” he regularly sought to frustrate the efforts of those who recognized abortion for the evil that it is.
Twenty-five years ago, while he ran against Ted Kennedy for a senator’s seat in Massachusetts, Romney made sure to have his photograph taken at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser. He also resoundingly affirmed that “we should sustain and support” Roe v. Wade and “the right of a woman to make that choice” to pursue or not an abortion. Romney insisted that it would be wrong for him to inject his “personal beliefs” “into a political campaign.”
When Kennedy charged Romney with waffling on the abortion issue—Kennedy said that he was “multiple choice”—Romney replied that upon losing “a dear, close family relative” to an illegal abortion, he and his family “have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others [.]”
Romney added: “And you will not see me wavering on that, or being multiple-choice, thank you very much.”
When Romney ran for the governorship of Massachusetts in 2002, he resolved to “preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose.” He elaborated: “The choice to have an abortion is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not [those of] the government.”
When Romney turned his eye to the presidency, though, he began whistling another tune. In accounting for his apparent conversion on the abortion issue, Romney explained that it was when he had a conversation with Harvard University stem cell researcher, Douglas Melton, that he recognized the error of his ways. Melton reportedly told Romney that the practice of destroying embryos for purposes of therapeutic cloning was morally permissible. Shocked, Romney said that he turned to his chief of staff, Beth Myers, and told her that “we have cheapened the sanctity of life by virtue of the Roe v. Wade mentality.”
The only problem with Romney’s account of the moment at which he had this epiphany regarding the wickedness of abortion is that Douglas Melton expressly refutes it, insisting that when he and Romney met, there was zero talk between them concerning the killing of embryos.
Romney’s political-moral conversion on the issue of abortion occurred at just that moment when he prepared to run for the presidency, at that time when it was most politically convenient for him to jettison a position that promised to frustrate his professional aspirations.
As we’ll see, regardless of the subject, political expediency trumped all considerations for Romney.
Second Amendment
When Romney ran for the governorship of Massachusetts in 2002, he was unabashed in his expressing his support for the strictness of his state’s gun laws: “We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts,” Romney remarked. “I support them,” he added. “I won’t chip away at them. I believe they protect us and provide for our safety.”
During Romney’s senate campaign, Romney endorsed the Brady Bill, federal legislation mandating a five day waiting period for all who would purchase firearms. Romney bragged that his commitment to this law was “not going to make me the hero of the NRA.” This, though, was just fine for Romney, for “I don’t line up with the NRA.”
In 2008, however, right before declaring his candidacy for the presidency, Romney purchased a membership with….the National Rifle Association.
Agricultural Subsidies
During Romney’s campaign for the Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994, he called for the “the virtual elimination” of the Department of Agriculture. But in 2007, while campaigning for the presidency, one of Romney’s spokespersons in Iowa sought to disabuse farmers of their concerns by assuring them that “Governor Romney believes that investing in agriculture is [the] key to our economy and families.”
Universal Health Care
Everyone knows that “Romneycare,” the socialized health care system that Governor Mitt Romney imposed upon the residents of Massachusetts, served as the blueprint for the law that would become known as “Obamacare,” the socialized health care system that President Barack Obama imposed upon all of America.
Although Romney, during his run for the presidency, repeatedly insisted that, insofar as Romneycare was limited only to a single state while Obamacare extended to the whole country, the former was good and the latter terrible, the truth of the matter is that much of Romneycare was indeed funded by the federal government. Much of it was financed, then, by American taxpayers from around the country—and not just by the citizens of Massachusetts alone.
More to the point, though, is that in the hard back edition of Romney’s book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, the author unapologetically declared his resolve to do for the citizens of America vis-à-vis healthcare what he did for the citizens of Massachusetts.
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When, however, the paperback edition of his book was released—on the eve of his run for the presidency—this line of Romney’s was omitted.
Conclusion
Romney is not the good, honorable man that even some of his conservative movement critics make him out to be. He is a dishonest, dishonorable person who will lie at the drop of the hat in order to serve his own self-interest.
His record renders this verdict undeniable.
Reprinted with the author’s permission.
