{"id":13297,"date":"2007-10-20T09:10:28","date_gmt":"2007-10-20T13:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13297.html"},"modified":"2007-10-20T09:10:28","modified_gmt":"2007-10-20T13:10:28","slug":"romney-tells-the-faithful-what-they-want-to-hear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/romney-tells-the-faithful-what-they-want-to-hear\/","title":{"rendered":"Romney tells the faithful what they want to hear"},"content":{"rendered":"

All eyes were on Mitt Romney at yesterday’s Values Voter Summit (a.k.a. PanderFest 2007), with the former Massachusetts governor anxious to win over the religious right. How’d he do? It’s a challenge for a Mormon candidate to overcome evangelical skepticism, but Romney told the faithful — by one count, there were nearly 3,000 attendees at the event — exactly what they wanted to hear<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Parenthood is the ultimate career for which all other careers exist.”<\/p>\n

“The American family is under stress. Is under attack. Ann and I are going to use the bully pulpit to teach Americans that before they have babies, they should get married.”<\/p>\n

“As president, I will realign government incentives to encourage marriage.”<\/p>\n

“A federal amendment is the only way we can protect marriage from liberal, unelected judges.”<\/p>\n

“I will oppose tax payer funding of abortion, oppose partial birth abortion … ban cloning … and raise awareness about embryonic adoption, or snow flake babies.”<\/p>\n

“It will be one strike and you’re ours” for pedophiles on the internet — “long prisons sentences, and if you get out, it means an ankle bracelet for the rest of your life.”<\/p>\n

“I will ensure that every family has health care — without new taxes, without Hilarycare, without socialized medicine.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Romney quoted C.S. Lewis, and avoided foreign policy. He spoke of defending “America’s religious heritage,” while brushing off concerns about Mormonism with a joke about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In short, Romney promised the crowd everything, which is exactly what they demand.<\/p>\n

The underlying motivations here are pretty obvious. Romney wants the foot-soldiers the religious right offers, recognizes the significance of social conservatives in Iowa and South Carolina, and figures that support from the Dobson crowd will make this a two-man race between Romney and Giuliani.<\/p>\n

Theocons seem to have been slowly coalescing<\/a> around Romney of late, and at a minimum, he didn’t hurt his chances yesterday.
\n
\nOh, and what about Fred Thompson? I spoke to several people who were on hand for the event yesterday, and everyone agreed that they were amazed at how awful he is<\/a> on the stump.<\/p>\n

[Thompson] spoke with his chin often buried in his chest, his voice largely monotone, and he cleared his throat or coughed repeatedly, prompting some to wonder if he might be ill.<\/p>\n

“He didn’t look good,” said Ronald Sell, 63, a musician from New York City.<\/p>\n

Mr. Sell said he initially had high hopes for Mr. Thompson but left disappointed and wondering why as an actor, Mr. Thompson did not “at least have his lines memorized.”<\/p>\n

“If he was the candidate, we’d be in trouble,” Mr. Sell said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the NYT’s Gail Collins put it<\/a>, “Thompson’s tendency to look down and read his remarks provided the audience with some of the most prolonged views of the top of a bald politician’s head in recent history. When you feel compelled to use an index card for lines like, ‘We must have good laws. We must do our best to stop bad laws,’ you have been spending too much of your life filming 30-second bits of dialogue.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All eyes were on Mitt Romney at yesterday’s Values Voter Summit (a.k.a. PanderFest 2007), with the former Massachusetts governor anxious to win over the religious right. How’d he do? It’s a challenge for a Mormon candidate to overcome evangelical skepticism, but Romney told the faithful — by one count, there were nearly 3,000 attendees at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}