As you may have heard, Gabriel Gomez pretty much sh!t the bed last night when asked about abortion. He said that he supports imposing a 24-hour waiting period for abortions – something that right now does not exist in Massachusetts – yet he also doesn’t support changing any laws. Huh? He also says that he doesn’t want to change Roe v. Wade, yet he would vote for a Supreme Court Justice who would do just that (there are now four votes on the Court to overrule Roe). What??
Watch for yourself.
David Bernstein’s take on that exchange seems right to me:
It was a mess, for many reasons—not least that he vowed to never support a change in the law, and declared his support for a change in the law, in a single 60-second answer.
But it was particularly striking to me because it was almost verbatim the exact same thing Mitt Romney said when running for governor in 2002—personally pro-life, politically pro-choice, promise to never change the law in any way. Pro-choice Bay Staters never forgave themselves for falling for it then, so it seems like a really bad idea to invoke the memory, especially while admitting that you don’t mean it.
Can’t say it enough times: our differently-winged friends at Red Mass Group were right when they declared Gomez “simply not ready for primetime.”
Where if you try to please everyone some
of the time, you please no one all of the time. Despite his best efforts to have an “abortion for some, miniature American flags for others” policy, Gomez has angered the pro-life constituency, small as it is in MA, for
coming out and voting for him. He also has come across looking foolish to socially moderate pro-business moderate Democrats and independents who he needs to win. The only thing Gomez proved is that he is just another politician willing to say nothing of substance and standing wherever the polls tell him to go. My position on this issue is more moderate than Markey’s, but I trust his record and authenticity on this and every other issue more than Gomez.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2013/06/06/gop-gomez-oppose-abortion-waiting-period/u7BSAkyUjJgiuqvfjpFYRL/story.html
Gomez needs a 24 hours waiting period before he can answer a question.
n/m