Willard Mitt Romney – and, no, I’m not making fun of his name. Anyone working with the nickname “wickle” had better be silent about anyone else’s name. Besides, I think that using one’s middle name is a certain sign of coolness — Norman Schwartzkopf, Calvin Coolidge, etc..
In case you’ve been living under a rock, I’ll mention that he’s running for the Republican nomination. The former Massachusetts governor has certainly been making quite the stir. You’ve probaby heard that he’s a Mormon. You might have heard that he’s a bit of a flip-flopper.
To his credit, he’s been a very successful businessman. His role in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics was no less than jumping in to salvage the operation, and he did it very well.
In 1994, Romney challenged Ted Kennedy for the Senate seat. It is that campaign that should be giving him a lot more trouble than it is … but the Republican establishment has more or less decided to give him a pass, apparently. I’ll get back to that. In any case, he came close — which is a major feat. Kennedy is used to token GOP challenge, not a real race. Of course, Kennedy had taken hits for his involvement in the William Kennedy Smith affair, and 1994 was not a good year for the Democrats.
In 2002, he won the gubernatorial election, and held that office until January of 2007.
Romney professes a pro-life platform now. In 1994, he said that there were only “tiny nuances” of difference between Kennedy’s position and his own on abortion. Looking at the chronology of events and what he’s done, I’m willing to believe that he changed his position legitimately during discussions of stem-cell research. However, it does make him vulnerable to charges of changing for convenience … especially when he avoids talking about it. He didn’t show up for the Values Voter Debate, which would have been his great opportunity to answer these questions and prove once and for all that he is one of us.
In 1994, Romney approached the Log Cabin Republicans promising to be a stronger advocate for gay rights than Kennedy himself. He has now renounced that position. If that seems like a shift of convenience, then you’re with me. Rather like his lifetime membership in the NRA … which began about one year ago, in the autumn of 2006.
I don’t trust him. I’ll admit that that link brings you to the Massachusetts Democrats, but the facts are still the facts.
Christopher John Dodd — the Democratic senator from Connecticut who isn’t Joe Lieberman, Dodd’s father was a Nuremburg prosecutor.
He spent six years in the House of Representatives before he went to the Senate in 1981, and he now chairs the Senate Banking Committee. In 2002, he voted in support of the Iraq war resolution. Since then, he has become an opponent of the war, and was the only Presidential candidate to co-sponsor the most-aggressive steps against the war. He’s well-regarded by the ACLU, the League of Conservation Voters, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. He supports decriminalizing, if not legalizing, marijuana.
I find Dodd to be intelligent and honest, if not someone I’d consider as a candidate. On his downside, he has been closely linked to Arthur Anderson, and helped insulate them from liability in fraud cases, such as Enron.
Other than that, I think we’d have to say that Christopher Dodd is, make no mistake, a genuine liberal. He does practice what he preaches, though. Two years in the Peace Corps, after which he was in the Army Reserves from 1968-75.
