Sunday, December 16, 2007

Romney on Meet the Press

Romney was on Meet the Press with Tim Russert yesterday. You can watch the interview or read the transcript here. I thought Governor Romney was very successful in handling the tough questions from Russert on Mormonism, abortion, etc. He came out strong against Huckabee's comment that the Bush administration has an “arrogant bunker mentality,” saying “that’s an insult to the president, and Mike Huckabee should apologize to the president." (Huckabee refuses to apologize). The most talked about moment occured when Romney was asked about the Mormon church's decision to finally allow African Americans into the priesthood in 1978. His eyes filled with tears for a moment as he described his reaction to the news.
“And so it’s very deep and fundamental in my life and my most core beliefs that all people are children of God. My faith has always told me that. My faith has also always told me that in the eyes of God, every individual was merited the fullest degree of happiness in the hereafter and I had no question that African Americans and blacks generally would have every right and every benefit in the hereafter that anyone else had and that God is no respecter of persons.”

4 comments:

Unknown said...

meanwhile that doggone liberal media is being "picayune" in the words of Pat Buchanan by considering whether Mitt is a liar:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22361410/

Jon Vander Plas said...

If we want to get into a lying contest, don't get me started on the Hillary Clinton (Travelgate, cattle futures, the "vast right-wing conspiracy" responsible for the Monica problem, saying she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary when he didn't climb Mt Everest until after she was born, Whitewater, etc) The Romney camp maintains that his dad did march with MLK. There's no doubt both of his parents were huge supporters of civil rights. The NRA thing was probably a mistake.

Unknown said...

Gov. Romney's spokesperson said that he was speaking figuratively. And Romney himself tried to defend what he said, rather than admit that he misspoke, twice.

The issue to me here is trustworthiness. Romney has clearly flip-flopped on issues important to social conservatives. And while he could have said without controversy that his father was a Republican who was a strong supporter of civil rights, he took it a step further and said that he saw his father march with MLK. That's an unnecessary embellishment which reveals to me something undesirable about his personality.

merry christmas Jon. I hope you're not pissed that you mentioned your blog to me. Perhaps if there was more sports postings we could find more areas of agreement. As it is, I'm not into the music scene, and we clearly see the world quite differently politically.

Tom

Jon Vander Plas said...

Merry Christmas to you too Tom. I am really glad that you read the blog and post comments. We'll probably always disagree on most things political, but I really enjoy a good discussion. I will try to do more sports/human interest postings.