Pop quiz, which liberal candidate is this?
On health care reform:
"We're spending a billion dollars giving health care to people who don't have insurance. And my question was: Could we take that billion dollars and help the poor purchase insurance? Let them pay what they can afford. We'll subsidize what they can't."
On abortion:
"I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. I have since the time that my mom took that position when she ran in 1970 as a US Senate candidate. I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years we should sustain and support it."
On the minimum wage:
"I do not believe that indexing the minimum wage will cost us jobs. I believe it will help us retain jobs."
On gun control:
"I am a supporter of the federal assault weapons ban. I don't think [the waiting period] will have a massive effect on crime but I think it will have a positive effect."
On gay rights:
"[As] we seek to establish full equality for American gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than [Ted Kennedy]...we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern."
On the right of gays to adopt and raise children:
"There will be children born to same-sex couples, and adopted by same-sex couples, and I believe that there should be rights and privileges associated with those unions and with the children that are part of those unions."
On the right of gays to serve openly in the military:
I am convinced that [DADT] will be the first of a number of steps that will ultimately lead to gays and lesbians being able to serve openly and honestly in our nation's military....I would be surprised if it stops there. I believe that there will be change over time as the military establishment and the rank-and-file become more comfortable with the realities of sexual orientation in the military. I will support progress being made in that area as time progresses and the military and society becomes more accepting.
On domestic partnership benefits:
I will support and endorse efforts to provide those domestic partnership benefits to gay and lesbian couples.
If you answered Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, or possibly Bernie Sanders, you're wrong - these are all quotes from 2012 Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney.
Polls have repeatedly shown Romney either leading, a close second, or tied for the lead in the Republican primary. You have to wonder what it says about the Republican electorate that, at a time when they are engaging in a radical hardening of their views - to the extent that Arlen Specter left the party and Charlie Crist and even McCain may be on their way out as well - they favor this guy as their candidate for 2012.
Since leaving Massachussets, of course, Romney has put a huge amount of effort into trying to erase his past - desperately attempting to deemphasize or straight up reverse much of his previous moderate ideology. Romney's flipping and flopping cost him heavily during the 2008 campaign, where he lost the critical Iowa primary after Mike Huckabee engaged in a concerted grassroots campaign to tie him to his past positions on abortion and gay rights.
By the end of the campaign, a defeated Romney gave a concession speech where he threw red meat to the base, and many remarked that, if nothing else, he had finally won over the skeptical right wing of the party. And, with the void of credible candidates on the Republican side, he settled into a low-key role as 2012 frontrunner, with many major conservative publications such as The National Review seeming to clearly favor him.
But then health care happened and Romney was forced to again confront his less-then-conservative past. In this case, it was his role in enthusiastically passing and then defending a MA health care plan that seemed suspiciously similar to Obama's. As if the past reversals on abortion, gay rights, gun rights and immigration weren't enough, Romney's support of health care suddenly began to look like an impossible hurdle to overcome. As with Hillary Clinton's support of the Iraq War in the last election, it wasn't so much that it created an immediate hit in the polls. Instead, it would seem to set up Romney for a fatal line of attack from his opponents years from now.
I have a suggestion for Romney though. Instead of making even more embarrassingly disingenuous statements about how he's now in total opposition to his own views from ten years ago, maybe he should try a new approach. In keeping with the title of his recent book, maybe Romney really should make "No Apology" for his moderate past. It might be his only chance to actually become President.
Right now Romney and other candidate are thinking largely in terms of winning the nods of conservative opinion makers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. And that ultra-conservative ideology is what the mainstream media tends to regard as mainstream Republican thinking.
But there's plenty of evidence to suggest that outside of say, the 20-30% that still supported Bush when he left office, there are a sizable number of more moderate right-leaning voters. After all, McCain was loathed by many Republican talking heads, but he absolutely trounced his opposition during the 2008 primary. And polls have repeated shown overwhelming voter support for policies like taxing the rich, letting gays serve in the military and yes, universal health care - all issues Congressional Republicans and radio talk show hosts wouldn't give an inch on.
If Romney really had the courage of his convinctions, he wouldn't apologize at all for his moderate past. Instead, he would throw any criticism right back in his opponents' faces. When Sarah Palin accused him of pushing a big government health care plan, he could simply take a page from 2005 Romney, saying "you're just passing your expenses on to someone else. That's not Republican, that's not Democratic, that's not Libertarian. That's just wrong."
When Mike Huckabee accused him of attacking the traditional family, he could take the real moral high ground and simply say, as he did in 1994, "I respect all people regardless of their differences. I feel that as a society and for me as an individual, it’s incumbent on all of us to respect one another, regardless of our differences and beliefs, our differences in sexual orientation, in race and that America has always been a place, and should be a place, to welcome and tolerate people’s differences. I personally feel and one of my core beliefs is that we should accept people of all backgrounds and recognize everyone as a brother and a sister because we are all part of the family of man."
And guess what? If Romney did that and it didn't kill his candidacy, it would change the Republican party's trajectory dramatically, maybe even permanently. The media would suddenly see that right-leaning voters aren't all in lockstep with the Limbaughs and Becks of the world, and their influence in the national debate could be marginalized. It could help create a sincere, credible opposition that would work with the Democrats on some issues, instead of the current parody of a party that is the Washington GOP. It would help put to bed once and for all the kind of divisive social issues that have played way too large of a role in American politics since the 60s, an argument a certain MA Senate candidate made himself in his 1994 letter to the Log Cabin Republicans.
And more importantly, Mitt Romney would never have to apologize again.