Romney Seeks to Dispel Doubts of Conservatives
ROMNEY
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Priyanka Dayal
Boston University Washington News Service
March 2, 2007
WASHINGTON, March 2 – Former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney Friday sought to dispel the doubts of conservative voters who are casting him as a flip-flopper, branding himself as a Ronald Reagan Republican who would shrink government and preserve traditional family values.
In a stump speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Mr. Romney touted his record of cutting taxes and balancing the budget as governor. Calling Massachusetts the “San Francisco of the east,” he said he fought state lawmakers to keep marriage between a man and a woman, drawing an ovation from the crowd. The room was packed with hundreds of conservatives, many of whom waited several hours to hear his half-hour speech.
Mr. Romney said he would follow President Reagan’s credos as an economic conservative, social conservative and national security conservative. Although the mainstream media cast conservatism as a dying philosophy, Mr. Romney said, “conservatism is alive and well.
“Coming from Massachusetts, I saw first-hand the liberal future, and it doesn’t work,” Mr. Romney said. “It’s time to take government apart and put it back together… simpler smarter and smaller.”
Mr. Romney’s speech came on the heels of speeches earlier in the day by presidential contenders Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, and U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado also spoke.
Many political conservatives have been disenchanted with Mr. Romney’s mixed record. He successfully ran for governor in 2001 as a moderate Republican but has been criticized for shifting to the right to appeal to a wider conservative base since leaving the corner office in Massachusetts.
“I think he’s personally fighting an uphill battle,” said Ben L. Giovine, a writer and researcher for Citizens Against Government Waste, who watched the speech on a TV screen in a neighboring room. “There was already talk of him being a flip-flopper. I haven’t heard anything positive about him.”
Mr. Giovine said it’s still early to be thinking about the 2008 presidential election because “the more time these guys have to run, the more time they have to screw up,” he said.
But Wetzel L. Drake, a third-year law student at the University of Baltimore who waited six hours to hear Mr. Romney’s 3 p.m. speech, said he left a strong impression despite the negative buzz.
“He erased a lot of doubt that some people had about him,” Mr. Drake said. “A lot of people think that he’s a liberal in sheep’s clothing, but I think he sold the room…. I think he’s going to get past this label of being a flip-flopper and someone who changes with the wind.”
Conservatives at the conference said Mr. Romney’s supporters had a much greater presence than the other presidential candidates did.
“This place was ridiculous with Romney people,” Mr. Drake said. “I hope it was a grass-roots movement.”
There’s a lot of animosity between Mr. Romney and Mr. Brownback right now, Mr. Drake added. “They’re trying to get that conservative label, because whoever gets that is going to be the conservative nominee.”
Although Mr. Romney said the Bush administration was unprepared for the rising violence in Iraq that followed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, he said he supports President Bush’s plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq, which is already underway. “An unquestionably strong military is the best ally for peace in the world,” he said.
To fight Islamic terrorists in the long term, Mr. Romney said he favors “a second kind of Marshall Plan” for moderate Muslim governments. “In the end it’s the Muslim people themselves who will have to eliminate radical jihad,” he said.
“America must remain the world’s military superpower,” he added. “To remain a military superpower, we must also remain an economic superpower.”
Mr. Romney also said he would oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants, fight to repeal the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law and enforce English education.
On working with lawmakers, Mr. Romney said: “I like vetoes. I’ve vetoed hundreds of provisions as governor,” adding that he favors a line-item veto at the national level like the one he used in Massachusetts.
Throngs of students attended the three-day conference, waiting in lines to see their favorite politicos, spanning from sitting congressmen to author Ann Coulter. The conference will end with a speech by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on Saturday.
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