Uh, let's see ... equal pay for women? Yeah, I still don't know what to think about that. (Jim Young/Reuters)
It's been a week since Mitt Romney's campaign was
first asked whether he supports the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. While his campaign (eventually)
said that he supports equity pay, and his lady surrogates
are telling us that of
course he supports equal pay, those very same lady surrogates voted against the Ledbetter Act. In fact, the entire Republican Party, with very few exceptions, voted against the act.
A week later, Mitt still can't quite answer the question:
DIANE SAWYER: I want to talk about a couple of issues relating to women. This 19 point difference between you and the president on women. Here are some specific questions. If you were president-- you had been president-- would you have signed the Lilly Ledbetter Law?
MITT ROMNEY: It's certainly a piece of legislation I have no intend-- intention of changing. I wasn't there three years ago--
DIANE SAWYER: But would you have signed it?
MITT ROMNEY: --so I-- I'm not going to go back and look at all the prior laws and say had I been there which ones would I have supported and signed, but I certainly support equal pay for women and-- and have no intention of changing that law, don't think there's a reason to.
Given that Mitt Romney has been running on a platform of doing
exactly that—running against the "prior law" known as the Affordable Care Act, which he says he plans to repeal when he's (giggle) president—Mitt's assurance that this particular prior law is perfectly safe isn't very reassuring. Back when Mitt was running for various elections in Massachusetts, claiming to be further to the left than Ted Kennedy, he also claimed to support the "prior law" of
Roe v. Wade too. But now that Mitt's trying to prove his "severely conservative" credentials, he'd love nothing more than to see that "prior law" thrown out too.
His party is firmly against not only the Ledbetter Act, but against the very concept of equal pay. His buddy in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker, just signed a bill to repeal the enforcement part of the state's equal pay law. Meanwhile, in Congress, the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would expand the 1963 Equal Pay Act, has been sitting there collecting dust because not a single Republican has signed onto it.
If Mitt Romney wants to assure the lady voters who don't like him that he's not going to get rid of equal pay, the way he plans to get rid of Planned Parenthood, he needs to say it in no uncertain terms. Besides, it's not like he can't shake the Etch A Sketch and take a completely different position tomorrow.
