De Republikeinse voorverkiezingen zijn op wat formaliteiten na nu toch over en de echte verkiezingsstrijd kan beginnen. Van Mitt Romney is echter nog steeds niet duidelijk waar hij voor staat, op sommige onderwerpen is hij al meermalen van standpunten veranderd. Daarom hier vijf artikelen die zijn positie en de weg ernaar toe uitleggen.
Door William Saletan, in Slate – 22 februari 2012
To understand Mitt Romney, you have to understand the most difficult passage of his political life: how he changed his position on abortion. Not the story he tells about it, but the real story.
Romney began his political career as a pro-choicer. In the story he tells, he had an epiphany, a flash of insight, and committed himself thereafter to protecting life. But that isn’t what happened. The real story of Romney’s conversion—a series of tentative, equivocal, and confused shifts, accompanied by a constant rewriting of his past—paints a more accurate picture of who he is. Romney has complex views and a talent for framing them either way, depending on his audience. He values truth, so he makes sure there’s an element of it in everything he says. He can’t stand to break his promises, so he reinterprets them.
Door Robert Draper in The New York Times – 30 november 2011
“O.K., I’ll be a little bit shorter,” the candidate promised. Nonetheless, all of this unscripted, free-enterprise small talk cohered into a larger point — indeed, it was the point, the message, the Tao of Mitt, if you will — and in case anyone failed to see it, the candidate spelled it out during the round-table discussion: “I can only tell you this from spending 25 years in business: I understand business.”
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Door Sheryl Gay Stolberg in The New York Times – 24 maart 2012
Twelve years earlier, they shared that stage as opponents in a bitter Senate race. Back then, Mr. Romney accused Mr. Kennedy of waging “untrue, unfair and sleazy” personal attacks. Now, the Republican governor was introducing the liberal Democratic senator as “my collaborator and friend.”
Mr. Romney’s complicated relationship with Mr. Kennedy, from campaign foe to health care partner, helped shape both his political career and his image. Today, as a Republican candidate for president, he is courting conservative voters, a constituency that does not look kindly upon Mr. Kennedy or the Romney approach to health care.
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Door Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker – 29 oktober 2007
Romney walked into a room decorated with posters of fifties icons. He stood before Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe and chatted with a table of patrons finishing plates of home fries and eggs. Suddenly, a heavyset man wearing a bright-orange cap entered the room. “Mr. Romney,” he called out. “Eric Orff—I’m a hunter.” It was a potentially awkward moment. Earlier this year, Romney claimed that he’d “been a hunter pretty much all my life.” A few days later, he said in a statement, “I’ve hunted small game numerous times.” Four days after that, Romney told W. Gardner Selby, of the Austin American-Statesman, “Any description of my being a hunter is an overstatement of capability.”
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Door David Kirkpatrick in The New York Times, via Longform – 18 december 2007
George Romney introduced Mitt to politics at the age of 14. The elder Romney was leading dual campaigns for the governor’s office and a new state constitution. Mitt was the only one of the four Romney siblings still at home, and his father often took him to political meetings or on the campaign trail. “Not only did I watch it, he taught me how to do it,” Mitt Romney recalled.
When his father was leading a drive to collect signatures for a revision to the Michigan Constitution, he would drive to softball games or other gatherings, then send Mitt into the crowd with a clipboard. “We would drive from event to event in the evening and he would sit in the car and tell me, ‘Go out there and see how many signatures you can get,’” Mitt Romney recalled.
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In 1994 was Mitt Romney de Republikeinse kandidaat voor de senaat in Massachusetts, tegen Ted Kennedy, die al sinds 1962 senator was. Het was voor het eerst in tijden dat Kennedy een serieuze tegenstander had, al won hij uiteindelijk toch. Nu zijn tegenstander presidentskandidaat is, is het debat dat de twee hebben gehouden in 1994 weer interessant, omdat het een heel andere Romney laat zien dan tegenwoordig. Als je een uurtje tijd vrij hebt,