Mitt Romney removed any doubt that he's playing to win the Iowa caucuses when he rolled out his first campaign ads in the Hawkeye state this week. As his first ad made clear, Romney needs to appeal to some of Iowa's "values voters" if he hopes to have a chance. The glossy paper ad arrived by U.S. mail and stressed that he's "the strongest Republican to beat Barack Obama and protect our values." Romney's "pro-life," "pro-marriage," and "pro-family" credentials were outlined behind three bullet points.
"I believe he has a real shot," Bob Vander Plaats, president of Iowa's "The Family Leader," says of Romney's chances at winning the state. But Romney won't be winning with the support of Vander Plaats, who served as Mike Huckabee's 2008 Iowa state chair and lost the 2010 gubernatorial primary by 9 points to Terry Branstad. "Most of the conservative base has written off Romney," Vander Plaats tells me in a phone interview. "The problem is with this environment being so different from '08, we don't have a natural like Huckabee we can coalesce around."
Romney doesn't need to win Iowa's social conservative activists, but he does need to allay the concerns of enough social conservatives to win the state. Vander Plaats says that one big stumbling block for Romney is the Massachusetts health care law's coverage of elective abortions. "They can try to spin away the Massachusetts health care law," he says. "The fact is the abortions are still allowed under that law, and the state is involved in funding those abortions. That’s just not all that long ago."
Taxpayer-funding of abortion is a toxic issue among the general electorate, and an extremely toxic issue among Republicans. Voters opposed public funding of abortion by a 73% to 23% margin, according to a December 2009 Quinnipiac poll, and Republicans opposed it by an eye-popping 91% to 5% margin. The issue nearly brought down Obama's health care bill in an overhwhelmingly Democratic Congress. And Mike Huckabee used it in the closing days before the Iowa caucuses to hit his chief rival. “[Romney] comes on and says he's pro-life and yet he signed a bill that gives a $50 co-pay for an elective abortion in his state's health care plan,” Huckabee said during a Meet the Press appearance just three days before the caucuses. Romney went on to lose Iowa by three points to Huckabee.
Of course, the Romney campaign says the attack is unfounded. "Longstanding court precedent requires Massachusetts to cover abortion services in government-subsidized plans," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul writes in an email to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. "Decisions about what services to cover were ultimately determined by the independent Health Care Connector Authority pursuant to the law."
It's true that the Massachusetts supreme court ruled in a 1981 decision the state must fund abortions for Medicaid recipients. In addition to Massachusetts, 12 other states--including Republican-leaning or battleground states such as (Tim Pawlenty's) Minnesota, (Sarah Palin's) Alaska, Arizona, and West Virginia--pay for abortions for Medicaid recipients. (Just four states have enacted laws through the legislative process to allow taxpayer-funding of abortion.)
Still, some social conservatives don't buy Romney's defense that it's all the Massachusetts supreme court's fault. "You know what I would think if I were a pro-lifer? That's a pretty darn good reason not to have the government take over the health care system," says Steve Deace, a Christian conservative Iowa radio host and longtime Romney antagonist. "Forget the mandate, which is wrong to begin with. The first moral principle is don’t murder."
Why, indeed, would Romney expand access to government-subsidized health care if he knew those plans would cover elective abortions? David French of Evangelicals for Mitt says that argument is a "classic example of not understanding what an actual governor of an actual blue state has to face."
"Mitt Romney did not have the option of saying ... that there won't be government involvement in Massachusetts health care," says French. "He was a conservative governor facing a veto proof majority in both houses dead-set on a particular kind of health care reform."
French argues that by going to the Heritage Foundation for advice and using what leverage he had, Romney go the best deal he could in Massachusetts. "Doing nothing wasn’t a realistic alternative," he says. "People need to get over the idea that he’s coming out of Texas. He’s coming out of Massachusetts."
"I don't think it is fair to say that Governor Romney just expanded taxpayer funding for abortion as though that was kind of a directly intended policy decision on his part," says Ramesh Ponnuru, senior editor at National Review and author of The Party of Death. "I certainly take the point that Massachusetts law requires abortion funding under Medicaid, and that is a reason not to expand Medicaid," says Ponnuru. "But you have to be careful about the principle that you’re acting on here. You don't want to say something like you don’t want, let’s say, a free market insurance policy that leads to more people getting insurance" because some private insurance policies cover abortions," he says.
The question for socially conservative Republicans isn't whether Romney's perfect, it's whether the alternative is better. At the moment, that rival is Newt Gingrich, who has surged into first place in the Iowa polls and national polls.
Gingrich has supported federal funding for research on stem-cells that involved the killing of human embryos. Gingrich's spokesman tells the Des Moines Register that “Newt Gingrich opposes President Obama’s policy on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research and believes it should be reversed.... [S]cientists have developed methods to develop embryonic-like cells that don’t involve the destruction of embryos but still offer hope for the development of new therapies.”
Another issue among social conservatives for Gingrich is his history of infidelity and two divorces. "There is a large and significant gender gap on the issue of your two previous marriages," wrote Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention in an open letter to Gingrich. "My research would indicate a majority of men, but less than a third of Evangelical women are currently willing to trust you as their president." Tony Perkins of the Family Research council said on Fox News that voters "want to know they are electing a politician with character, not character as a politician."
INFEDELITY
ENDIT
THE QUESTION ISN'T WHETHER HE'S PERFECT....
past support of abortion: vander, french,
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“If I had any doubts about his sincerity of his convictions in this area, I would not be supporting him for president. The life issue for me is a central, central issue. It’s not a side issue. I’m absolutely convinced that it’s genuine."
To the extent that governor Romney had discretion
DEACE: I don't know how anybody after an alleged pro-life conversion signed into law a health care mandate that includes taxpayer-funded abortions for $50 bucks before you hide behind as a candidate. “well the courts told me I had to do that.” The one thing I would say about Gingrich is that the philosophy of the courts and their original inten is in my estimation the only mechanism by which we will end baby murder in America
Romney supporter David French
PONNURU
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseID=1408
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For Romney to win the better than his chief rival, who, for now, is Newt Gingrich.
that , tells me in a phone interview tells me. Vander Plaats
http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2011/11/26/the-first-romney-campaign-advertisement-hits-iowa/
first Mitt Romney rolled out his first campaign ads in Iowa this week, removing any doubt that he's trying to win the January 3 caucuses and sew up the nomination early. The first glossy paper ad came through the mail and stressed
first campaign advertisement in the state--a mail card--stresses his values.
Since July, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain have all taken turns as the Iowa frontrunner, with Romney stuck in second place (or a close third) and hovering around 20 percent. Now, with Newt Gingrich the latest candidate to surge in Iowa, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/ia/iowa_republican_presidential_primary-1588.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E-Jq2Rb9Lo&feature=player_embedded
Saturday night...