Romney changed his explanation of why he voted for Paul Tsongas

Page history last edited by Anonymous 2 yrs ago

Background

This Sunday on George Stephanopoulos Mitt Romney explains his voting for Paul with these words; "When there was no real contest in the Republican primary, I'd vote in the Democrat primary, vote for the person who I thought would be the weakest opponent for the Republican."

12 years ago, the Boston Globe reported the following explanation of why Romney voted for Tsongas.

"Romney confirmed he voted for former U.S. Sen. Paul Tsongas in the state's 1992 Democratic presidential primary, saying he did so both because Tsongas was from Massachusetts and because he favored his ideas over those of Bill Clinton," the Boston Globe's Scot Lehigh and Frank Phillips wrote on Feb. 3, 1994. "He added he had been sure the G.O.P. would renominate George Bush, for whom he voted in the fall election."

Romney's explanation of why he voted for Tsongas shows that he is a flip-flopper

Reasons to agree

Reasons to disagree

There is nothing contradictory. We have a report from two Boston Globe employees as to why Romney voted for someone 15 years ago. There is no direct quote.
I bet if you asked Scott Lehigh, Frank Phillips, or Mitt Romney that those weren’t the only reasons why Romney voted for Tsongas (the fact that Tsongas was from Massachusetts, and that he was better than Bill Clinton). Do you vote for someone because of only two issues? You might only give two issues, when you have limited time, but no one votes for a candidate because of only two issues.
Why don’t we take Romney at his word. He voted for Paul Tsongas because he liked him better than Clinton, and that he didn’t think that he would win the general election against Bush? Are these somehow mutually exclusive.
The democrats and MSM is going to take everything Romney ever said 10 years ago, tell us it, and then say "however today he says..." blank. They are going to use this tactic weather it contradicted the previous statement or not. They will use this tactic every time Mitt Romney does not repeat his previous statement verbatim.

This campaign flyer from 1994 shows that Abortion is the only issue that Romney has changed.

Analysis from Mike

Mitt Romney should learn from this that he should not over simplify things. People didn’t like John Kerry because he made things more complicated than they had to be. People won’t like Mitt Romny if his explanations are over simplistic. If someone from the media asks you why you voted for Paul Tsongas, you might want to give him a quick answer and get onto the next issue. But you should totally explain all your reasons, because if you just give one reason, the media will search to see if you ever gave one of the other reasons why you voted for the guy. If they are not the exact same explanation they will accuse you of changing you mind.

It is the same stupid thing that the Democrats and the Media have done to George Bush. Bush gave lots of Reasons why we went to war with Iraq. They were a destabilizing force in the world, they invaded two of their neighbors in the last 50 years. All right democrats. Give us one other example besides Iraq of a large country invading it’s neighbor? Iraq invaded Kuwait and Iran. But the only justification you hear the media bring up is WMDs.

George W. Bush needs to keep talking about the other non-WMD reasons to go to war with Iraq. Romney also needs to give a more thorough explanation of his decision making. In fact, I think he should use my format of Reasons to agree and Disagree with everything.

Every time Romney discusses the same issue more than once he better say the exact same thing verbatim, or the Democrats and the MSM will accuse him of changing, even when the two statements are not mutually exclusive.