I expect he’ll argue that if PP can’t get that money from non-government sources, it means the market doesn’t value health care for low-income women, so they shouldn’t get any. Or else the market will eventually provide some other form of care if it deems it worthwhile. Or he could take the opposite tack and say the problem doesn’t exist in the first place, which is Romney’s move of choice today on health care.
We’ll just sell condoms in the ER, problem solved!
Besides which, there are still plenty of anti-abortion bills that Congress could pass. It’s just that the Republicans vehemently oppose all of them, because they’ve all been proposed by Democrats.
As usual you liberals are being dense. There is a clear solution that requires no govt funding. Women should pretend they are being raped when they have sex because you can’t get pregnant from being raped. I know this is true because a Republican on the Science Committee said it.
He was on the Republican committee to decide what to do about all that science. Looks like they’ve made up their minds.
Why don’t they just borrow these services from their parents?
So, in tonight’s debate Paul Ryan said the agenda of a Romney administration would be to make abortion illegal.
Guess that puts an end to this little episode.
Not exactly. He said their agenda would be to repeal Roe v. Wade and leave it up to the states.
He gets away with it for a very simple reason: he understands how to make it not hurt him.
You have a position X. You believe in position X.
Now you’re in front of an audience who believes position X is wrong, but position Y is correct. So you say you’re for position Y.
A few things can happen at this point:
- The people who know nothing of your position X up to this point believe that you believe in position Y.
- People know you did believe in position X but think “hey, he’s had a change of heart. That makes him good in my book!”
- Some of those people will know you’re a lying liar. But what are they going to do? Shout you down at the campaign rally? They’ll be nutcases and quickly escorted out. Go home and blog about it? Yeah, good luck with that. Or hope that the media picks up on it? Probably.
But look what’s simultaneously happening. Campaign aides quickly go to the media and say “No, our candidate doesn’t believe in Y at all. That was a misstatement. He believes in X just like he said before.”
So now the people at the campaign rally have heard he likes Y and will never read the retraction. Win.
Secondly, the media, now knowing about the “retraction” can’t ethically say “Romney supports Y!” when they know that comment has been walked back. At best, they can present a waffling story of “Here’s where Romney said he supports Y, but campaign aides later walked that back to X.” Which doesn’t really hurt the candidate much. But if they really start pressing into the examination to the point where it’s beyond a “candidate said Y, aides said X” it goes beyond the news into editorial.
In other words, it’s off the front page. Less people reading it. And clearly whoever wrote that editorial has a bias, says the candidates base.
In other words, this whole game doesn’t hurt Romney whatsoever, because people who are paying attention to the statement aren’t paying attention to the retraction or any other statements by the candidate that may contradict what he’s saying right at that moment. So he can say whatever he wants, whenever he wants, to whomever he wants and just walk it back later with no ill effects.
None of that is true, though. There’s that whole Internet thing now, which makes it easier than ever to compare a candidate’s current position with his previous ones in text or better yet in video form. This has come back to bite Romney a lot of times. It frequently hurt him during the primaries, and it’s happening again right now.
He just won’t come back.