Washington Times
Article published Oct 10, 2007
Log Cabin ad calls Romney flip-flopper
October 10, 2007
By Joseph Curl - Mitt Romney is portrayed in a new ad by a Republican group as a serial flip-flopper, and a former senior Bush administration official says the description is beginning to stick.
The 30-second ad (below), airing in Iowa and on Fox News for the next 10 days, portrays the former Massachusetts governor as changing his positions on abortion, gun rights, even his opinion of former President Ronald Reagan. Paid for by the Log Cabin Republicans, a homosexual rights organization, the ad uses Mr. Romney's own words from a 1994 debate.
"He's changed his views so many times it's really hard to predict what a Romney administration would be like," Log Cabin President Patrick Sammon said yesterday. "This education effort on our part is about more than gay rights, it's about this man's principle and whether you can trust him."
Dan Bartlett, former senior adviser to President Bush, says Mr. Romney faces a serious challenge.
"When you see a narrative developing, you better make sure it's one you like, because if it's not, they are very difficult to change," he recently told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce audience.
"What they're experiencing now early on with the [charges of] flip-flopping on positions, I think they saw a different primary when they were setting him up to run. I think they saw a much more conservative field so they were trying to solidify his conservative credentials."
Mr. Bartlett knows the seriousness of the charge, and how a candidate can be permanently defined by it. In the last presidential election, the Republican Party spent millions of dollars shortly after the Democrats had chosen Massachusetts liberal Sen. John Kerry as their candidate to paint him as a flip-flopper.
By summer 2004, late-night comedians were joking about his changing positions and Mr. Bush had made the issue one of his primary attacks. He hammered Mr. Kerry for a Senate vote on war funding, ripping the senator's convoluted explanation — "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
Just before the election, Republicans hit Mr. Kerry, a windsurfer, with one more brutal ad, showing him tacking one way, then another, back and forth across the screen.
The flip-flopping charge has long dogged Mr. Romney, too. He was coolly received early this year at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, and opponents walked the halls handing out flip-flops. But his campaign said yesterday that the charges are prompted by Mr. Romney's strengths, not his weaknesses.
"If name-calling by opponents worked, we wouldn't have grown our support to the point where we are in very strong position in the early primary states," said campaign spokesman Kevin Madden. "When you have an extraordinary record of accomplishment like Governor Romney has, opponents are reduced to just name-calling."
He said the ad by Log Cabin "is quite transparent. They are an organization that supports [former New York] Mayor [Rudolph W.] Giuliani. They are also targeting Governor Romney because he is a staunch defender of traditional marriage and favors a federal marriage amendment."
Mr. Madden also explains that while Mr. Romney is now "firmly pro-life, he was not always pro-life. He was wrong on that issue and has explained that he has changed, but he has changed in the right direction, very much like Ronald Reagan before him.
"I think voters can accept someone who realizes they were wrong and has moved in the right direction on an important issue," he said.
The Log Cabin ad is subtle — some have even confused it as pro-Romney. "For years, he's fought conservatives and religious extremists — Mitt Romney," a narrator says. The ad shows Mr. Romney from a 1994 debate saying: "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years that we should sustain and support it."
"Mitt Romney opposed the gun lobby, even Ronald Reagan," the narrator says.
"I was independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush," Mr. Romney says in the same debate.
The ad closes with the narrator saying: "A record fighting the religious right, a pro-choice record, Massachusetts values — Mitt Romney."
The Romney camp fired back after the ad debuted, calling it a "personal, negative attack." But Mr. Sammon said the charge borders on the absurd.
"It's almost laughable that Romney's campaign considers his own statements a 'personal, negative attack.' These are your words, Governor Romney, and Republicans deserve to know the truth about your record."
Here's the ad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elx3UWmyAY4