Eileen McNamara lays it out:
“There isn’t a dime of difference between Mitt Romney’s position on choice and Shannon O’Brien,” Healey told the Associated Press about her running mate and his Democrat opponent when she was helping to market Romney as an abortion-rights supporter in the 2002 campaign that sent them both to Beacon Hill.
If that was true then, what is true now?
“Well, I think where we disagree is pretty clear. We’ve always disagreed on choice, and I think those differences have only become more stark over time,” she said of Romney on Monday night during the debate ….
“Either she wasn’t honest then, or she isn’t being honest now,” said Angus McQuilken, public affairs director for the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.
Has Romney “evolved” on this issue? Sure — he’s certainly more overtly and publicly anti-choice now than he was then. But look at what Healey said the other night: “we’ve always disagreed on choice.” (emphasis mine) Yet in 2002 she said that there wasn’t “a dime of difference” between Romney and O’Brien. Those two statements simply cannot both be true if she’s the abortion rights supporter she says she is. Either she really did “always” disagree with Romney on choice, in which case she was intentionally misleading the voters in 2002, or she was totally fooled by Romney’s “moderate” shtick, in which case she unintentionally misled voters in 2002, and is now trying to gloss over the fact that she had no idea what the top of her ticket believed about a very important issue. Neither is very flattering to her.
As a public service, we’ve started keeping a tally of Healey’s policy flip-flops in a new box in the left-hand sidebar. If you spot one that’s missing, let us know!
Fantastic work!
I’m not fan of Kerry Healy by any stretch of the imagination, but this seems like this is some pretty flawed logic. Yes it is a bit odd that she contradicted what she beleives to be Romney’s view now, and what she saw it as then, HOWEVER there is no mention of whether she agreed or disagreed with Romney’s opinion then at the time. I completely understand where you’re going etc., but it doesn’t quite add up right….
this is the equivilent of the following: Jane says Jim doesn’t like oranges. Jane changes her mind and says Jim does like Oranges but she doesn’t. Jane never said in the first place HER opinion on Oranges. There’s a multitude of other things to attack Kerry Healy about, this one is grasping at straws….
I don’t really get either your initial point or your elaboration. Healey says she always disagreed with Romney on choice. She sure didn’t let that on in 2002. What’s complicated about that?
Healey has been and continues to be a pro-choice candidate.
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In 2002, Romney said he was personally against abortion but would protect a woman’s right to choose. O’Brien who, changed her position on abortion in the 1990s. In the 1980s, she was against it. Do you think that her personal views changed, or just her legislative ones? I think it was the latter. So what exactly was the difference between Romney and O’Brien?
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Since 2002, the gap between Healey and Romney has indeed widened, with issues such as RU-486 and, more recently, stem cell research coming under the abortion umbrella.
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Your conclusion that either Healey was misleading or lying is based not on fact, but on your own zeal to outfit anyone with an (R) next to their name in a red suit, tail and trident.
Romney campaigned hard as a Weldian moderate both in 1994 and in 2002. We’ve laid it all out before.
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So I stand by my post: Healey now says she always has disagreed with Romney on choice. So: did she know what he “really” thought in 2002? Or was she fooled?
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Finally, don’t misstate my conclusion. “Unintentionally misleading” is one of the possibilities I gave, and that has nothing to do with tridents or other devilish accessories. It just has to do with whether she had any idea what Romney actually stood for.
but come on now David, that headline of yours is quite a bit misleading….
Today, she says she always disagreed with Romney on choice. In 2002, she backed him to the hilt on it, and never let on that she had any disagreement with him. Again: what’s confusing about that?
Nowhere in the statement above does it says she backed his opinion, she stated what his opinion was, but did not say “I stand by Mitt Romney’s views on Abortion” or anything to that effect.
This is absurd. Your argument is that she is a “flip-flopper” not because she actually changed her position on an abortion but rather because she changed the way she is explaining her understanding ofGovernor Romney’s position on abortion as it relates to both her position and that of Shannon O’Brien four years ago? The length of that sentence alone I think shows the absurdity of this line of attack.
made her defend Romney’s views on abortion in 2002. That was her choice. And if you think there’s no inconsistency between what she said then and what she said now, I guess I can’t help you.
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I really don’t see why this is so complicated. This isn’t so much about what she actually believes about choice. It’s about what she’s willing to say to get elected. Here, again, is Eileen McNamara.
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That’s my point. It’s not a complicated one.
please point out to me where she DEFENDED his view. I fail to see it, she pointed out what she “BELIEVED” (we have no way of REALLY knowing whether or not she knew at the time) to be his opinion, but at no point have you shown that she DEFENDED it, that’s what I’m having trouble understanding. I agree, now that she knows his position is not what he claimed it to be at the time she should denounce him for lying, but will she? Of course not, that would most certainly not be politically prudent of her, especially if he DOES get elected President (stranger things have happened, but if it does, I’m packing up and moving). It’s easy for us to say from the outside looking in at the opposition, but would we really expect our candidate to do the same in a similar situation??
You got it.