Redstate

for the repitition

THe RightMarch debacle seems more than just a good-faith "pro-life" march. It seems, at the very least on the part of the organizers, like pure political vengeance just so their guys/girl can win. It's sad to see such selfishness...it's bad for the pro-life movement, bad for pro-life credibility, bad for shifting society in a more pro-life direction.

The little propaganda piece that ProfG linked to in which he and it lied about what Romney actually did or didn’t do regarding the morning after pill just blew any chance they had of passing off the first flier as an “honest mistake.”

If this is the kind of crap that they’re going to be pulling before the primaries have even started, then we need to bring the hammer down hard on this group.

have a change of heart on abortion-a lot of people do, but I can't help but be suspicious of the timing of his change.

It appears to be political opportunism.

My understanding is that the state legislature passed a law and there was a legal question about whether the law was in conflict with an already existing law. The state Department of Health came out and said that their position was that Catholic hospitals would not have to dispense this certain drug (I doubt the state department of health did an exhaustive legal analysis since most state departments usually rely on the state's attorney general for that sort of thing). Romney initially said he agreed with that position. Later, only after Romney's attorney took a careful look at the conflict of laws issues, Romney changed his position because it was not supportable from a legal standpoint.

There may be some that think he should have acted contrary to what his lawyer told him was the law. However, it seems better that he follows the law no matter how wrong, from a policy standpoint, he believes it to be.

But details have been changed to make Romney look worse than he is. That is the goal, after all. The McCain crowd (of whom Liz is a charter member) sees Romney as the biggest threat to the "straight talk express" right now.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

You will quickly learn that the 2005 bit is not about RU-486, but about Plan B. If you want to maintain any credibility, it's kind of important to get your facts right, even if getting them wrong makes an attack on Romney sound better.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

Liz Mair is the editor of WWW.GOPPROGRESS.COM, a RedState-style blog for libertarian, mainstream and moderate Republicans

So is that a "Yea, so I knew this had nothing to do with RU-486, what about it?" or an "Oops my bad, but I can't be bothered to make a correction?"
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

Liz Mair is the editor of WWW.GOPPROGRESS.COM, a RedState-style blog for libertarian, mainstream and moderate Republicans

presuming of course that zuiko's comment about "getting your facts right" is directed at me.

Let me reiterate that:

1. I reported what I was told on the phone, which referenced RU-486, not Plan B (even if erroneously).

2. I had not seen the leaflet until today and have nothing to do with the thing, apart from reporting on it.

3. It appears to be RightMarch that is confusing RU-486 and Plan B by including the statement from the leaflet in their press release, right by the quote from the AP story referenced above. As it happens, the action in question, I suspect, is still is going to be objectionable to strongly pro-life voters, and some Catholics specifically, notwithstanding inconsistent use of terminology. Don't forget, many Catholics and pro-lifers do see prevention of implantation of a fertilized egg as effective homicide, and the question is, should Catholic hospitals, where that is the belief, be forced to be complicit in the deed? My view is "no."

4. If your issue is me implying that Plan B is an abortifacient, last time I checked, at least some life groups considered it to be one (or act as one, quite frequently).

5. I'm about equally favorable to Rudy Giuliani these days as I am McCain. Still, I'm not Romney favorable, and it looks like that's all that matters to you.

Liz Mair is the editor of WWW.GOPPROGRESS.COM, a RedState-style blog for libertarian, mainstream and moderate Republicans

RightMarch actually seems, in their press release, to have cleaned-up the RU-486/Plan B issue, which seems to have been the result of them using confusing and possibly misleading wording on the leaflet-- and, according to them, Romney exploiting it...

"His campaign is being disingenuous, to say the least, when they respond that he never `flip-flopped on RU-486'. Nobody said he did. He needs to stick with the facts."

So, hopefully, we're all clear on this now...

Personally, I'm done with it. The whole subject has already become boring, and unless someone comes up with something very new and very exciting, I'm finished talking about this.

Liz Mair is the editor of WWW.GOPPROGRESS.COM, a RedState-style blog for libertarian, mainstream and moderate Republicans

Still, I'm not Romney favorable, and it looks like that's all that matters to you.

I'm not a Romney-bot. I just happen to think there's enough legitimate stuff to rip the guy on that nobody has to start making things up. Somebody, at some point, made up the RU-486 stuff and it spread like wildfire. I know some pro-life groups have a problem with Plan B, but there is also a huge difference in the levels of acceptability of RU-486 (which is used to cause abortions until almost the 3rd month of pregnancy) and Plan B (which is completely ineffective once an embryo implants). The fact that it helps them smear Romney by "mistaking" one for the other makes me more than a little suspicious. It sure would've been nice if someone along the line had bothered to fact check it with a simple search of the Boston Globe before passing it on.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

And apologies for intimating that you're a RomneyBot!

I agree there's enough legitimate stuff to rip him on other than this (for me, it's RomneyCare and his old comments about cutting capital gains taxes during the 90's). I also agree, as I've said on my site, that it seems that RightMarch deliberately fudged the distinction between RU-486 and Plan B, and obviously the person who called me was in on the game (not surprisingly, I read "abortion pill" to mean RU-486-- how silly, though I note that I did put up the AP story which referenced "emergency contraception" not RU-486, which I guess I thought would clarify...)

I also agree that there are big differences between RU-486 and Plan B, in terms of their acceptability to various grades of pro-lifers, though I maintain that if a Catholic hospital doesn't want to do something on the grounds of its stated religious beliefs, it's crappy to make them (that's just a big government, intrusion thing, though, and we all know I'm a major skeptic of that with my "leave me alone" mentality).

As for fact checking, all I can say is 1) when I did a Globe search yesterday, I actually came up with nada-- the article you've linked to was not listed as a search result and 2) when I did a general search on Google and found the AP piece, my presumption switched to "oh, we don't mean RU-486, but we still mean something that many Catholics see as homicide"-- hence the linking to the article and non-interchange of "RU-486" and "emergency contraception" as terms from the mention of the AP piece onwards.

I think that it would have been nice for more accurate terminology to have been used in the leaflet in the first place, rather than fact checking being done-- after all, it seems that's the root of the debate here. Ultimately, the point for a lot of people at the March remains the same, irrespective of whether RU-486 or Plan B is in question. It's just that now, the waters have been muddied a little, and RightMarch seems to have failed to communicate its message as effectively as it might have.

C'est la vie. Now, my attention must turn away from this most scintillating of topics...

Liz Mair is the editor of WWW.GOPPROGRESS.COM, a RedState-style blog for libertarian, mainstream and moderate Republicans

As long as it's not Sam Brownback. LOL

Mike Pence? fantastic.
Ken Blackwell? wonderful.
Newt Gingrich? brilliant.
Jeb Bush? still bitter over how he treated Katherine Harris, but I could get over it.

Sam Brownback? boooring.

Sen. Brownback wouldn't be my choice among all Republicans, no, but until I see someone better stand up, I'll live with him.

Run like Reagan!

The little propaganda piece that ProfG linked to in which he and it lied about what Romney actually did or didn’t do regarding the morning after pill just blew any chance they had of passing off the first flier as an “honest mistake.”

Listen to Romney for yourself:

http://realserver.bu.edu:8080/ramgen/w/b/wbur/wburnews/2005/me_1209_2.rm

The REAL Romney - On Forcing Catholic Hospitals to Administer Abortion Pills.

Some pro-lifer.