Up until now, I have pretty much kept my gloves on and stayed away from personally attacking any candidate.  I much prefer to focus on why I support Mike Huckabee for President, being that it is a much more pleasant topic to discuss.  However, since Mitt Romney insists on bringing out negative ads against Mike Huckabee that are full of half truths and blatant lies, I think it is time to address the issue.  Let me be clear that I am doing this on my own and have had no contact with the Huckabee campaign about this or any other blog post I have written or may write in the future.  This is me talking, not the Huckabee campaign.

First of all, my suspicion of Mitt Romney has nothing to do with his being a Mormon. There are issues there as well, but they are not my main concern, at least not at the moment.  My main problem with Romney is his authenticity.  He seems to be willing to say anything to win an election, if it fits the moment.  You’ve heard the saying “if it feels good, do it”?  Romney seems to have a motto that says “if it sounds good, say it”.  It sounded good to say his dad had marched with Martin Luther King, so he said it.  No matter that there wasn’t a shred of truth in the statement.  It sounded good to say he “got tough on meth”, so he said it.  Again, never mind that it wasn’t the truth.  It sounded good to say he is pro life, just like Mike Huckabee, but it fails to mention just how recent his conversion to pro life was and how many times he has changed his position on abortion.  It makes me wonder how long it will last.

Throughout this entire campaign, different candidates have invoked the name and the legacy of Ronald Reagan.  Aside from the fact that I believe Mike Huckabee is the closest to Reagan in the way he governed and the way he can communicate to the people, let’s take a look at the way Romney feels about the great communicator.  Here is a quote from an article from Star Telegram.

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.– As Mitt Romney campaigns through South Carolina, which will hold the South’s first presidential primary Jan. 19, he evokes Ronald Reagan in almost every airplane-hangar rally, every restaurant backroom, everywhere he can.

It seems like a surefire way to appeal to the diehard conservatives that the former governor of liberal Massachusetts needs to win the Republican presidential nomination.

In Myrtle Beach, at the end of a long campaign day last week, he was more emphatic than ever about the Great Communicator as a crowd of about 200 listened.

“I take inspiration from the strength Ronald Reagan talked about,” Romney said. “It was his view that the right way to overcome challenges was for the country to strengthen itself.”

That sure sounds good, but that wasn’t the way Romney has always felt about Ronald Reagan.  The article goes on to say:

Yet Romney wasn’t always such a Reagan fan.

In 1994, when he ran for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, he said, “I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.”

Romney spent years in the state registered as “unenrolled,” or unaffiliated with a political party, and in 1992 he voted for former Sen. Paul Tsongas, a liberal Democrat, in the Massachusetts Democratic presidential primary.

Romney was considered a moderate in those days, losing the Senate race in 1994 and winning the governorship in 2002. He voiced support for abortion rights, allowing gays to serve openly in the military and other positions that led activists to think he was a centrist.

Romney declined repeated requests to talk about his links to Reagan. Campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said that Romney’s 1994 “independent” quote is out of context, that the vote for Tsongas was a vote against Bill Clinton and that not enrolling in either major party was common in Massachusetts.

Critics, however, charge that Romney’s enthusiastic embrace of Reagan is another expedient Romney lunge to the right.

“He didn’t support Ronald Reagan,” said Mark Salter, a senior adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of Romney’s rivals. Romney’s promise to carry on Reagan’s legacy is more evidence of “Mitt Romney’s bizarro world,” Salter said.

“This guy didn’t even support Ronald Reagan,” former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said disdainfully on an MSNBC show last month.

Again, this appears to be a case of Mitt Romney saying what would sound good to the voters at any one particular time.  If he is willing to do that, then what will he be willing to do if he is elected President.

As I said above, Romney would like us to associate him with Ronald Reagan.  His actions and words, however, lead me to associate him with a more recent President, namely one Bill Clinton.  Clinton was known for being willing to tell people what they wanted to hear. That is what Mitt Romney is guilty of.  He knows what we would like to hear from his lips that would sway us to cast our vote for him in this election and that is what he is saying. Again, never mind that it is far from the truth.

One thing I ask you to do.  Do not take my word for this.  That would be a great injustice to you.  Please do your own research on Mitt Romney.  Go to Fact Check and search for the keyword “Romney” and you will find a host of articles that debunk the negative ads he is running against Mike Huckabee and John McCain and that also spread a little “negativity” over on Romney.  You can also go to True Romney and find more videos and information about the false and misleading “facts” Romney likes to use.

So, as the title asks, will the real Mitt Romney please raise his hand?  We, as the voting public, have a right to know where you really stand.

That’s my take!

Larry

Tags: Bill Clinton, Campaign, Huckabee, Mitt Romney, President, Pro Life, Ronald Reagan

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 6:12 pm and is filed under News/Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.