When he challenged Ted Kennedy in the 1994 U.S. Senate race, Mitt Romney used polling data to determine that he would run as a pro-choice candidate while remaining personally pro-life, according to a new book by Boston journalist Ronald Scott.The Washington Examiner revealed the moment in Scott's book:
According to Scott, Romney revealed that polling from Richard Wirthlin, Ronald Reagan's former pollster whom Romney had hired for the '94 campaign, showed it would be impossible for a pro-life candidate to win statewide office in Massachusetts. In light of that, Romney decided to run as a pro-choice candidate, pledging to support Roe v. Wade, while remaining personally pro-life.
Well, that's certainly pragmatic. If your positions will keep you from getting elected, change your positions. Now he's trying to win the primaries, so Mitt's switched his abortion stance back to his original anti-abortion position (or an even more draconian one, I can't keep up) and no doubt during the general election he'll find yet another position to take.
As much as we might scorn Romney for changing his past position purely based on polling numbers, I think I might find this even more shallow, though:
In an October 1994 debate, Romney said he believed that abortion should be "safe and legal" and that Roe v. Wade should stand. He added, "And my personal beliefs, like the personal beliefs of other people, should not be brought into a political campaign."Sen. Kennedy seized on his stance: "On the question of the choice issue, I have supported the Roe v. Wade. I am pro-choice. My opponent is multiple choice."
Romney responded, "I have my own beliefs and those beliefs are very dear to me. One of them is that I do not impose my beliefs on other people." He then told the story of a family friend who passed away from an illegal abortion.
So at least back then, his justification for changing his position is that he would not impose his beliefs on other people (bringing a family relative into it as an example). Now he'll "impose his beliefs" on you happily, I guess, because the Republican base wants him to.
This is what I find so detestable about Romney. Not any individual positions, or even the more atrocious elements of his corporate past, but his apparent lack of any strong principles whatsoever. Every stance is "whatever it has to be," and tomorrow it might be something else. Both his corporate and his electoral lives have demonstrated a complete lack of personal conviction or morality. Just ambition.
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