The Holy Cow! Candidate - © Copyright 2005 The Atlantic Monthly
“Once the legal process is completed and the amendment is either successful or not successful, I will live by the law of the land,” he continued. “I might not agree with it, and I’ll say it’s wrong and people have made the wrong choice, but I do abide by the law.”True to his word, Romney has not tried to change the laws governing abortion in Massachusetts. But there are those—and not just his critics—who say he has not always been entirely truthful, or at least not entirely clear, about what his views on abortion are. One Friday in early June, Romney held a makeshift press conference in New Hampshire to address comments made by his adviser and friend Mike Murphy, who had said of Romney in a story just published in the conservative National Review, “He’s been a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly.” Since the story broke Murphy had been telling everyone that his comments had been taken out of context (explaining that the “faking it” line conveyed what he thought Romney’s liberal critics were saying), but the press demanded to hear it from the governor himself.
Romney was stiff, almost robotic, as he read a prepared statement. “While I’ve said time and again that I oppose abortion, I’ve also indicated that I would not change in any way the abortion laws in Massachusetts. And I’ve honored that promise. I take my promises very seriously. As to the comment [of] one of the advisers associated with my campaign, he expressed to me clarification of his comments. He’s a good friend and I accept that clarification.”
After dodging the inevitable question from one of the assembled journalists about whether he planned to run for president (Romney just laughed amiably in response, as he always does), he went back inside the gray, eye-deadening walls of the Radisson Hotel Manchester, where he would soon be speaking to a group of elderly Republican women and eating a largely inedible dinner—one of many he will have to ingest should he decide he wants to succeed Bush in 2009.
The annual Saint Patrick’s Day breakfast is an old Boston tradition. Held in South Boston on the Sunday after Saint Patrick’s Day, the event is an occasion for Massachusetts pols to sling barbs at one another between rounds of local ballads such as “Charlie on the MTA” and “Southie Is My Hometown.”
July 30th, 2005 at 6:52 pm
I read the article, Gurl, and I agree that it is very good. Questions like those about the garments WILL be asked, and geting them out of the way early, and in a manner which flatters the Governor, are a bonus.
I honestly think that the punditocracy is overestimating the hostility of evangelicals to Mormons. What they want is a moral PERSON, and Romney is that.
Don’t forget, Gore was the Baptist, and Bush is a Methodist. The person is bigger than the denomination.