August 8, 2007

It's been a busy day over at Andrew Sullivan...

...and if you haven't been checking it out, you should! Amongst other things, Hugh Hewitt seems to have decided that I and the other guys are all liberals because we said that Mitt Romney's comment about his sons contributing to the country by campaigning for their Dad, while others are risking their lives in Baghdad, was dumb.

Well it is dumb, and if Hugh can't see that, then he's suffering an even greater case of Romney-groupieism than even I had imagined. But never mind.

Come check out the back and forth!

> Read more & share
August 8, 2007

More problems for the Republican running for the open CO-Sen seat

A while back, I wrote about how the Republican nominee-presumptive, who will face off against Mark Udall in the battle to replace Wayne Allard in the CO-Sen race next year, seemed to have got himself in a spot of bother by virtue of having taken campaign contributions from those connected with a company, to which he helped dish out money in connection with charter school programs.

Well, it turns out that this might be worse than it looked on the face of it when I first wrote on this (which was bad enough, given that Colorado is not a good environment for Republicans at the moment at all). From ColoradoPols:

Check out this highlight from a press release sent out today:

Schaffer, in his current role as a member of the Colorado State Board of Education, recently cast the deciding vote for a for-profit company, owned by David Brennan, to continue to receive hundreds of thousands of Colorado taxpayer dollars for programs that the company sells to Denver's charter schools. (Denver Post, May 10, 2007). The Denver School Board had voted 6-1 to get rid of Brennan's costly programs. (Rocky Mountain News, May 10, 2007)

Schaffer took money from Brennan both before and after the vote. Schaffer still has not disclosed to the State Board that since this recent vote he has taken thousands of dollars more in campaign contributions from Brennan within weeks of his vote for Brennan's company...

...In the December 10, 2006, Schaffer lectured his fellow Board Members on the need for disclosure of political contributions to members of the SBOE.(SBOE Recorded Minutes 12/10/2006, 2:47:10) Schaffer pontificated “Government grant making as the most corrupt aspect of civil government in America.”

SBOE Member Karen Middleton called on Schaffer to pursue a “written conflict of interest poli...

> Read more & share
August 7, 2007

More on the Romney pro-life thing

The Union Leader up in NH has a very good column this morning that gets right down to brass tacks on the issue of Romney and his abortion stances:

In a 2002 forum with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Shannon O'Brien, candidate Romney said he would "preserve and protect a woman's right to choose," opposed a 24-hour waiting period before getting an abortion, said he would do nothng to make it harder for a woman to have an abortion, and denied accepting Massachusetts Citizens for Life's endorsement in his 1994 Senate race. He even said, "I don't accept either label, pro-choice or pro-life." What happened between 2002 and now?

Romney has given two accounts of his changing views on abortion. One is that he was pro-choice until 2005, when he became pro-life after researching stem cell issues. The other is that he was personally pro-life but refused to impose his views on the people of Massachusetts.

Both cannot be true. Which is it? We are not sure we care. But we do care that Romney has two stories that don't mesh and appears to have inadvertently admitted to taking a position on this issue because it was politically expedient to do so.

Quite right. I have always maintained that it is very likely that Romney remains pro-choice, and possibly even more so than Giuliani (he certainly made a much bigger deal of being pro-choice when he ran for high office in Massachusetts in 1994 and 2002). And the issue for me is clearly not electing a pro-choice Republican.

The issue for me is that abortion is an important subject and if someone cannot take a clear stance on it, explain what their views are and why they hold those views, then that tells me that that person a) doesn't have any real views on the subject (which is problematic no matter where you s...

> Read more & share
Most Recent Blogs | 161 | 162 | 163 | 164 | 165 | 166 | 167 | > More