Romney Bombs at Values Voters Summit

Here's a good report on Romney's poor performance at the Values Voters Summit in D.C. last weekend. Despite his failure to move the audience and his poor showing in their straw poll (coming in 3rd after Mike Pence and Mike Huckabee), we predict he will forge ahead and dump millions into the the race. It will be interesting to watch whether National Review, Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), and other establishment "conservatives" support him this time around.

In addition to his weakness on conservative social issues, Fischer highlights the horrible RomneyCare health plan he foisted on this state, with its $50 abortions. (And please, conservatives, remember that the supposedly conservative Heritage Foundation had a hand in devising Romney's mandated coverage health plan!)

Much more on Romney to come. Stay tuned.

Mitt Romney is toast
by Bryan Fischer @ Renew America (Sept. 21, 2010)


I just returned from the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., and the main takeaway is this: Mitt Romney is toast.

Tony Perkins and FRC Action were entirely right to invite Romney to speak. (AFA Action was a co-sponsor of the event.) Romney is eager to court the pro-family community, and deserved the opportunity to persuade values-driven voters of his bona fides. In this task he failed.

While one conservative leader after another — Mike Huckabee, Michelle Bachmann, Mike Pence, and Jim DeMint to name a few — rang the chimes on the importance of keeping social issues at the heart of the conservative agenda, Mr. Romney managed only one passing reference to the sanctity of life and sanctity of marriage.

On top of that, Romney's speech came across as plastic, forced, and stilted. He was the only speaker of the weekend to use a teleprompter, and at times tried to be more of a stand-up comic than a political leader. He seemed to be working to get a Las Vegas lounge act instead of a seat in the Oval Office. While other conservative speakers spoke from the heart, he spoke from a script.

But it is his glaring weaknesses on social issues that will doom his chances for electoral success in 2012. He was given the feature slot at the Values Voter Summit, the last spot on the Friday morning slate, and his speech fell flatter than the proverbial pancake. Response was polite but tepid.  ... more...

National Review's Romney Endorsement -- Our Challenge

After their fawning endorsement of their donor, Mitt Romney, we sent this note to the National Review Online editors (for whom we had emails):

You have a whole blog dedicated to judicial activism … yet your magazine just endorsed Mitt Romney, who is guilty of causing the worst incidence of judicial activism since Roe v Wade to be treated as “law”. Professor Hadley Arkes even wrote an important piece in NATIONAL REVIEW highly critical of Romney on the day the “homosexual marriages” began in Massachusetts (thanks to Romney’s orders): "The Missing Governor" by Hadley Arkes (May 17, 2004). Arkes asked: "Have Republican leaders lost their confidence on moral matters?"

Does no one remember that prominent conservatives pleaded with Romney in 2003-4 to uphold the Mass. Constitution, and defy the illegitimate Court ruling on homosexual "marriage"? Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Buchanan, Mat Staver (Liberty Counsel), and even HUGH HEWITT (Weekly Standard, 11-20-03) told Romney to stand up against judicial tyranny. But Romney ignored them and singlehandedly began homosexual "marriage" in Mass. (The Legislature still has not changed our statutes to allow it, as ordered by the Court...which didn't even tell Romney to do anything!)

Why did Romney issue orders to his executive branch officials to change the marriage licenses and perform the marriages? There was no new LAW to enforce! If we couldn't trust Romney with the Mass. Constitution, how can we trust him with the U.S. Constitution? See our report: http://massresistance.org/docs/marriage/romney/

Only one of the 19 editors contacted, Jim Geraghty of their "Campaign Spot" blog, has responded: "Mass e-mailing editors who had nothing to do with the endorsement just pisses them off."

We answered: "I would love to know how NR arrived at a decision to endorse, if the editors weren't involved? Seriously, what was the process? (P.S. I don't appreciate language like "p off" – lots of us regular people still don't talk like that.)"

He then said: "I think I don't appreciate mass e-mails berating me for a decision I had no role in about as much as you don't appreciate the term 'pisses them off.' " (He just had to repeat that.) And then he sent us to his earlier post:

Wednesday, December 12, 2007
MIKE HUCKABEE, MITT ROMNEY
Another Thought On The Endorsement [by Jim Geraghty, on NRO's Campaign Spot]
Last night Rich [Lowry, editor-in-chief] explained a bit about NR's endorsement process to Hugh Hewitt:
HH: Take me inside first the process by which National Review arrived at its endorsement.
RL: (laughing) I don’t know, Hugh. It’s a really tightly held process here. It’s like selecting the Pope. We can’t reveal too much, but…
HH: How many people got a say in this?
RL: Well, it’s our senior editors, our publisher, our president and our Washington editor and myself. And we’ve been talking about it the last two weeks or so, just because this is our, through the quirks of our publication schedule, this is our last issue before people vote in Iowa and New Hampshire.
[Geraghty continues:]
So complaining to anybody else at NR or NRO is not really going to do any good. In fact, complaining won't do any good, period. If the magazine endorsed somebody besides your guy, you say, "I disagree," you hope it does Romney as much good as it did Phil Gramm, and then life goes on....

In other words, no feedback, no discussion welcome. The court has ruled, and that's that. (And he even continues with silly putdowns of Ron Paul's and Mike Huckabee's campaigns.) But these people rarely answer the substance of the question. Maybe Geraghty could do a little research on this all-important fact in Romney's record as Governor, then get back to us with a little more thoughtful response. He is the editor of NR's Campaign blog, after all.