Less Is More, Except On This One Particular Issue

The funny part is reading about Romney changing his mind on an issue that is usually in the forefront of political debate. I guess he's forgotten about that close family relative who died. Maybe they weren't that close after all?

The downer part is that we have a group of politicians clamoring for "less government." They want the government out of our lives and off the backs of business. But here, when it comes to abortion, they want the government to tell you what to do.

You can almost hear the gears grinding in Romney's head. Santorum...winning...he is...pro-life...so I...must be...pro-life. For all the talk of progress in the world let's imagine which one of these guys could hold a candle to any of the Founding Fathers, in terms of ideals and political eloquence, if there is such a thing? Even the bad ones?

WASHINGTON — From the moment he left business for politics, the issue of abortion has bedeviled Mitt Romney.

In 1994, as a Senate candidate, he invoked the story of a “close family relative” who had died after an illegal abortion and insisted that abortion should be “safe and legal,” though he was personally opposed. In 2002, while running for governor of Massachusetts, he sought the endorsement of abortion rights advocates, promising to be “a good voice” among Republicans, one advocate said.

In 2005, Governor Romney shocked constituents by writing an opinion article in The Boston Globe that declared: “I am pro-life.” Running for president two years later, he struggled to explain that turnabout. “I never said I was pro-choice, but my position was effectively pro-choice,” Mr. Romney told George Stephanopoulos of ABC during a Republican debate. “I changed my position.”

Now, with the nation’s culture wars erupting anew, Mr. Romney has plunged headlong into abortion politics.

He tangled with President Obama last week over whether religiously affiliated hospitals should be required to provide free contraceptives — “abortive pills,” Mr. Romney called them. And when a breast cancer group pulled its financing from Planned Parenthood, Mr. Romney called on the federal government to follow suit, saying, “The idea that we’re subsidizing an institution that provides abortion, in my view, is wrong.”

The comments reflect Mr. Romney’s evolution from abortion rights advocate to abortion foe; gone was any trace of the candidate for governor who, 10 years ago, answered a Planned Parenthood questionnaire by saying he backed “state funding of abortion services” under Medicaid.

Today Mr. Romney is working hard to convince his party’s skeptical right wing that he is “adamantly pro-life,” especially in the wake of his embarrassing loss in three states last week to Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania and a stalwart of the anti-abortion movement. Yet the more Mr. Romney courts social conservatives, the more two of his Republican rivals, Mr. Santorum and Newt Gingrich, dredge up his past to attack him as a flip-flopper.

Meanwhile, Democrats and their allies are painting Republicans, including Mr. Romney, as “a radical bunch when it comes to women’s health” who are “going backward on birth control,” as Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in an interview last week. If that message sticks, it could hurt Mr. Romney with women and independents, a critical voting bloc in a general election.

[New York Times]