Mitt: Another Good Point.

If you didn't notice, Mitt Romney won the first Republican Presidential Debate last week. He was great. And, in the aftermath, Mitt went on Hannity and Colmes last night.



TRANSCRIPT:

"Hannity & Colmes"
Fox News
May 7, 2007

FOX NEWS' ALAN COLMES: "Can you help us understand what specifically it was that made you change your view on that?"

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: "First, what I found interesting is, had I been pro-life and then changed to pro-choice, no one would ask the question."

FOX NEWS' SEAN HANNITY: "That's a great point."

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: "But it's – if you go in the other direction, as I have and as Ronald Reagan did and Henry Hyde and George Herbert Walker Bush, it's like the media can't get enough of how – why did you change?"

COLMES: "People think because it's an election year conversion."

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: "But no one ever asks that if they go the other way. There's always, like well, you've come to the side of light. The truth is, being governor and before I was governor, this is something I thought about, we discussed as a family, I discussed with my staff. We talked about the concerns.

"And the point where it sort of went over the edge for me and, of course, it's not just – didn't just come up for the first time but went over the edge is we were having this debate on cloning. And I could see where the Roe v. Wade devaluation of human life had led. It had led to a point where people were beginning to say, 'Hey, now we're going to start cloning embryos.' It's like wait a second. This really is going too far."

I spoke recently with one of my friends who was IN THE ROOM when Governor Romney had that meeting about cloning--when he decided to become politically pro-life (since he had always been personally pro-life). She spoke about the moment with great respect and reverence. This was a man who realized he needed to change, and then did so based on his concrete values.

Don't we want that in a President?

Apart from being the worst interviewer on television, Alan Colmes is just amazingly bitter about his perception of conservative fallacies. Why does Colmes care if Romney flip-flopped on Abortion??

That is why I love Romney's quote: "had I been pro-life and then changed to pro-choice, no one would ask the question."

Welcome to the wild world of intellectual dishonesty. It happens in both parties. And, one of the reasons I like Romney, is that I think he is intellectually honest.

I mean, who else would cite "Battlefield Earth" as their favorite book?*

That is all.

Horatio




* Incidentally, I spoke with Mitt's brother-in-law on the phone a few days later, and he assured me that "Battlefield Earth" really was a rather compelling fiction. I'm not sure if it qualifies to be added to the stack of books on my night stand (Current read: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln). But, it is funny that his family seems to really enjoy that book.

Hey... if I were running for President, I wouldn't want people to know that one of my favorite movies is Drop Dead Gorgeous or A Pyromaniac's Love Story. That doesn't make them any less-brilliant movies!