Favorite son?
That’s how some in the press are referring to Mitt Romney with respect to his relationship to NRA. Mitt Romney has spoken at the last two conventions. He hurriedly joined the NRA on the presidential campaign trail and has tried to pick up the gun vote. Trouble is that Romney’s record on guns isn’t good. As governor, he never saw a gun control bill he didn’t like and he signed into law the state’s ban on weapons that look like assault rifles. No thanks.
Via David.
May 18th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Yeah, that’s one of my irritations with the NRA. I don’t give two shakes of a rats ass how good a speech a politician can give. Their record is what defines them, not how well they can cater a message to a certain group.
I realize that the NRA has to sell their souls to the Devil to be able to play the game, but it still irritates the piss out of me.
May 18th, 2009 at 11:30 am
I personally don’t see the political attraction some do in Romney, but I wonder about the kind of closed-minded thinking that refuses to permit anyone – let alone a politician – to ever change their mind/stance/vote on any given issue. Especially as they become more informed on the issue.
Dangerous.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
@retro:
You must understand the difficulties in trusting someone, particularly a politician and particularly when the change of opinion occurs in parallel with political campaigning. It’s not so much that one cannot change their mind. It is more that it is hard to trust someone who seeks profit in the form of votes and the only cost incurred to receive that profit is to change a few lines of one’s speeches.
When that is the case, one can only rely on signals (in this case voting actions) in order to approximate the future actions. That does not mean that one cannot dramatically alter their signaled future actions, just that in order for a voter to keep their cost low (keep from electing a politician whose policies are not aligned with their own), the best information available is past voting/bill approval record of that politician.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Remember, this is the media that is willing to claim that the AWB covered full-autos…and repeats the phrase “gun show loophole”…etc.
So, what’s the data behind “Favorite Son” ?
May 18th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
He was not replaced by anyone like him in MA after his tenure as governor. He had no real legacy other than the passage of further extremely poor social policies. How’s that free health care for everyone going, Massholes?
He was not accepted by the majority of Republican voters in the last presidential primaries.
He campaigned against his record on abortion and guns in the presidential campaign.
He has great hair and for a white man is clean and articulate.
None of this means he will support on principle either the right to self defense or the right to keep and bear arms.
There are actual supporters of RKBA in the political arena. We do not need to support someone who only mouths the right words to gain our temporary support.
May 18th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
He and Huck are both opportunists. I don’t trust either of them.
Notice how McCain was absent? Hmmm?
May 18th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
“He and Huck are both opportunists. I don’t trust either of them.”
I’m sure that you meant Huckabee right? I’m not a opportunist, I’m a realist. 🙂 And I dont trust Romney or Huckabee either. For that matter, there’s no politician that I’ll ever 100% trust.
May 18th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Huck,
You’re right re: not trusting politicians. And you’re in good company with that:
“It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights… Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power… Our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go… In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” –Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. ME 17:388
May 18th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
No thanks from Massachussetts.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Sounds like Bush 41, who became an NRA “life member” long enough to win election, then canceled his membership.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
FWIW I actually really like Huckabee. He’s right on guns, he’s a fair tax supporter and while his stance on killing the unborn and gay marriage are a bit hardcore, there is not really much a president will be able to do on those issues – and the god squad loves him. And he was the only republican candidate to point out the downturn in the economy before things actually went tits up.
I would not buy a used car from Romney.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
“I wonder about the kind of closed-minded thinking that refuses to permit anyone …. to ever change their mind…”
Well, how much air time has Romney burned up repudiating his former position? Not just saying better things, but actually saying “I was wrong to think that the state AWB had any real effect on crime, and even if it did it still violated the rights of law-abiding citizens. I’ll certainly never do anything like that again!”
Well….?
May 18th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
I don’t trust his ass as far as I could kick it. If that’s what the GOP plans to run in the next race I’ll go 3rd party for sure. He’s O’s ticket to a second term.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:40 am
No trust for either. Romney could not describe how his own taxes were done and didn’t understand that out of State tax shelters didn’t let him tax income earned there… while having many such shelter investments himself. As for Huckabee, said one thing and did another as Governor. I don’t trust his ‘Fair Tax’ now as while he was governor he added a surtax to existing taxes, no exemptions. So you got taxes on top of taxes.
I would actually like a politician I could trust 20% of the time, but I’m having real problems even getting someone that low.