ScoopNZ, which appears to be a New Zealand newspaper, provides an interview with Judy Dushku, an old friend of Mitt Romney who has some choice memories about Romney’s earlier flip flops on the abortion debate. What’s amazing is that it plays into the characteristics of Mitt Romney as a candidate who’s willing to move in any direction to get elected.

In the interview, Romney scolds a woman who faces death from a pregnancy for considering undergoing an abortion, despite the fact that her doctor also recommends an abortion. He then professes his pro-choice views, which he attributes to an aunt who died from a botched back alley abortion, and political necessity in Massachusetts that’s been rubber stamped from “the brethren” in Salt Lake City.

Suzan Mazur: But you broke off your friendship with him when you publicly criticized his approach to the abortion issue while he was bishop, specifically his sadistic “counseling” of a 40ish-year-old woman in her sixth pregnancy to give birth, even though her doctor advised her that she’d developed blood clots and that her life was in danger.

Judy Dushku: I sort of naively didn’t think I was breaking off the friendship. I was upset about the position he took. And I wanted it to be clear both privately and publicly how upset I was about that. But I did go up to Mitt after his 1994 Senatorial race to congratulate him for making a respectable showing against Ted Kennedy, whom I had actively supported.

… (more…)

Mitt Romney | 1 Comment »

This is whta we’re going to remember in six months from tonights debate.  Republican candidates getting a round of applause for advocating torture.

Presidential Debates | No Comments »

While going through the DNC blog I came across this story from this morning:

 Ironically, McCain has hired Terry Nelson, a strategist with his own long history of dirty tricks who said he admired the tactics used against McCain in South Carolina in 2000.

Just in time for the debate tonight, a smear attack on Mitt Romney and his Mormon beliefs. Coincidence?

The Spartanburg Herald-Journal reported that some unsigned literature attacking Mormonism was being mailed to some households in the state. The literature was described as “an eight-page diatribe,” with the title “Mormons in Contemporary American Society: A Politically Dangerous Religion?” It did not mention Romney, who is Mormon, but was seen by politically active South Carolinians as a direct attack on his candidacy, the paper said.

Of course, Mitt Romney has hired Warren Tompkins, Bush’s South Carolina chief strategist in 2000–and one of the principal architects of the smear campaign against McCain. Watch out, folks. This could get ugly.

That came earlier than I expected.

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The DNC picks out a 2003 McCain quote that I was looking for during the last debate. McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts for the same reason I did, because they were a payoff to the superwealthy and undermined the deficit. He’s on record saying that, maybe he assumes another Republican won’t call him out on it. It’s one of the reasons I’ve suspected that the youtube drops have been coming from the McCain campaign. Why hasn’t McCain been getting hit?

2003: Worsen the Deficit Before It Ever Helps the Economy.” Senator McCain rejected the Bush tax cuts in 2001 ‘All the predicates for the 2001 tax cuts and all the predictions for its results were absolutely, completely wrong,’ he said. And it will worsen the deficit before it ever helps the economy, he added.

Today: No. None. None. Taxcuts, starting with Kennedy, as we all know, increase revenues. So what’s the argument for increasing taxes?If you get the opposite effect out of taxcuts?”

The supply side myth about the Kennedy tax cuts is a myth.

John McCain | No Comments »

I’ve got to say it’s weird for Giuliani to keep bringing up adoption rates in NYC after Laura Ingrihm and factcheck.org slapped him for it. The image below is from factcheck.org, Giulaini did nothing the bump occoured during his first year in office. Why he continutes to play the numbers game over adoptions is unkown.

Rudy Giuliani | No Comments »

Soren’s right on this one ofcourse. Tonight’s debate will be abortion heavy because it plays into issues in the current South Carolina media cycle, because it allows the other candidates a way to pull votes from Giuliani, and because the Anti-Choice debate has a lot of facets for a small but mobilized portion of the electorate. Those facets hurt Rudy a lot but apparently they set up another flip-flop trap for Romney as well. Does anyone doubt that Romney will continue to take the trap? Romney’s road to the nomination runs to through the right-wing of the Republican party, and he can’t turn back.

My two suggested questions:

Once Roe becomes illegal many American’s feel that only wealthy women will have the means to get a safe abortion, how will you enforce the interstate commerce clause to make sure there’s no economic disparity?

Follow-up: Last week everyone, except Giuliani, said they’d be very happy if Roe v. Wade was overturned, can you describe how happy you’d be in 30 seconds?

If all goes according to plan, The Right’s Field will have live blog coverage of the debate tonight. We just have to remember the parental lock password that unlocks Fox news.

Presidential Debates, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney | No Comments »

Tom Schaller belts out this prediction about how the Republican primary is going to play out.

So allow me to dispatch with all the “it’s way too early” disclaimers and offer a bold prediction about the 2008 presidential contest: Rank-and-file Republicans are going to throw the fight. Rather than make electability
their primary criterion for selecting their nominee, GOP primary voters will opt to send a protest message to the party’s establishment and Beltway insiders by nominating a statement candidate who is none of the Big Three.

….

The 2008 nomination is the first, key test of the long-term consequences of this leap. Will it turn out to have been an off-course trip for the Republican Party, during which Gerald Ford-era politicians allowed James
Dobson to steer the vessel toward conservatism’s darkest waters and toward the possibility of minority status for the near term? Or was the Bush 43 era some strange, temporary deviation from the strong-management, secularized, and more socially moderate path that the second term of Ronald Reagan and
Bush 41’s lone term not long ago signaled?

The excerpts I haven’t quoted are at least as intriguing and well worth the subscription to TAPPED to read them . Here’s the thing, conservatism is near death. The religious right/anti-environment/pro-rich/anti-intellectual/anti-gay electorate makes up about 9% of the electorate. Something has to give and it’s most likely a weakening of the position of the anti-taxer coalition, as well the religious right. The irony ofcourse is that even after Iraq, the neo-conservative viewpoint is transcendent. Rudy McRomney or a conservative who can’t win?

Candidates | No Comments »

With Giuliani’s decision to partially embrace his pro-choice past in order to move past the issue the navel gazing at Giuliani’s semi pro-choice position has started.

His campaign at some level has apparently decided that if Giuliani comes out in May as a pro-choice Republican with a few flips to the right, he’ll avoid the question in August. It’s not a bad idea for the campaign, they can move in front of the issue, take the hit in the polls early on in the primary season and actually rebuild his campaign with solid name identification but without the baggage of being the front runner. The problem for Giuliani is that non-orthodoxy on choice is a fairly serious issue for Republicans. In as much as the Republican party created so many sub issues inside of the pro-choice deabte that Giuliani cannot escape alienating part of the Republican base, a portion of it’s elected officials and come across as sincere. Abortion becomes a a giant tattoo for Giulaini and it’ll be impossible to avoid the issue into the future.

Giuliani attempted to get in front of the issue with a speech in Texas that included his abortion stance. The campaign uploaded the video to youtube. On Laura Ingrihm’s show he was sandbagged on the issue. On Fox News this morning, it constituted nearly 40% of the interview. It missed a tons of issues in the crevasses of the anti-choice movement. What would politicians who signed cards saying they would never vote for a pro-choice politician say if Giuliani is the candidate? Can the Republican party mobilize anti-choice voters when the head of the ticket is pro-choice? The questions are interesting and they will never go away precisely because the Republican party has made abotion such a grab all, overtly political issue. I have no doubt those are the questions that Giuliani will be asked at gatherings in Iowa, and New Hampshire for the next nine months because it’s like a very visible tattoo.

I’m least fascinated by the Giuliani candiday but he presents some interesting dilemma’s for the Republican’s in ‘08 that illustrate the social cleavages inside the party. What will moderate republican voters think, or are they already lost because of the war?

Rudy Giuliani | 1 Comment »

Is that what Hagel’s hinting at? Weird.

Chuck Hagel | 2 Comments »

The NYTimes is reporting that Giuliani’s campaign is reversing their previous position, which as NYTimes:

After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.

At the same time, Mr. Giuliani’s campaign — seeking to accomplish the unusual task of persuading Republicans to nominate an abortion rights supporter — is eyeing a path to the nomination that would try to de-emphasize the early states in which abortion opponents wield a great deal of influence. Instead they would focus on the so-called mega-primary of Feb. 5, in which voters in states like California, New York and New Jersey are likely to be more receptive to Mr. Giuliani’s social views than voters in Iowa and South Carolina.

That approach, they said, became more appealing after the Legislature in Florida, another state they said would be receptive to Mr. Giuliani, voted last week to move the primary forward to the end of January.

The shift in emphasis comes as the Giuliani campaign has struggled to deal with the fallout from the first Republican presidential candidate debate, in which he gave halting and apparently contradictory responses to questions about his support for abortion rights.

I may have to pull up some polling numbers but California’s Republican primary voters are very much conservative, more conservative than the NY Times or the Giuliani campaign imply. Remember Southern California Republicanism is the seat of failed Reagan conservatism. I know Ayn Rand runs through the ideology but it’s mixed with a vicious mixture of nativism so I’m not sure if it’s a demographic that Rudy will do well with next February.

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