Mitt-Up Close & Personal/Special Interest Groups
My wife and I went to see Mitt Romney again. He was at Phillips of Exeter Academy, a local prep school of some renown I might add. This time, the forum had a less formal atmosphere and Mitt spoke in a circle on the round surrounded by the PEA students and some local residents. He was up close and personal and I found it apparent that in person, he is not the "polished" politican that he is sometime labeled. In person, he spoke with sincerity and conviction which doesn't seem to carry the same way on TV. If you can, see him in person.
All of the questions came from the PEA students with the exception of one special interest "birddogger". It was interesting to see by the phrasing of the student questions, the preconceived perceptions they had of him. The majority of the questions came from a liberal bent challenging him on his positions. His responses were clear and informative, to the point that I felt by the end of the forum, the majority of the students had a positive change in their view of him.
An example was a question from a young man challenging Mitt on changing his stance on gay rights from 1994 to now opposing "gay rights". Mitt responded, "he has always supposted gay rights and opposes any discrimination". The students chuckled. He asked the young man the source of his information. The student responded that it was a quote from the New York times, quoting a gay activist whom had stated that Mitt Romeny had changed his position and was now not supporting gay marriage. Mitt's response and the students' reaction was telling. He started by saying that he has never support gay marriage, that he has always believed marriage to be between a man and a woman. Then he said that he knew many were too young to be aware of the circumstances back in 1994. Back then gay rights was a heated issue related to discrimination in employment and housing. Gay marriage was not an issue back then. It was not even discussed at that time. Gays were fighting to stop discrimination, and he supported their efforts. But the activist now demanding gay marriage have crossed the line of "rights", and he continues to believe the definition of marriage should remain a union between a man and a woman. At the end, Mitt even received applause from the students.
With this historical context given, it was apparent from the student comments that their perception of him changed to the positive. Hopefully the media in your states will report on gatherings like this one so everyone will receive a balanced representation of all candidates prior to your primary vote.
As a side note, I would like to comment on a general issue related to the primaries and the primary coverage. Much of the actual candidate media coverage seems to get sucked into a vacumn due to out of state special interest groups conducting media stunts at these candidate forums. I urge all of you, Independant, Democrat and Republican to strongly voice your opposition to these groups taking valuable time from the citizens to ask questions and get to know the candidates personally.
I have no problem with local citizens asking pointed questions on any issue they are concerned with. However, these Move-On.org groups constantly interfer with our electorial process and give distorted or misleading facts to the voters.
For Mitt's PEA forum, we had the "priviledge" of having what appeared to be a bright yellow cab constantly circling our town which had a 3 foot by 12 foot sign on its roof with an anti military message from "PrioritiesNH.org". My two issues with this stunt were; that the license plate for the cab was not New Hampshire but from Vermont, and, the sign's pie chart comparing military spending verses social spending showing the defense budget being over 50% of the budget was intentionally misleading.
Of course there was a disclaimer written in 1 inch letters on their sign, saying that this was only the "discretionary budget". But how many people know that the discretionary budget is less than 20% of the total Federal Budget, and that 95% of the social service budgets are in the "non-discretionary" side of the budget? If you go on the groups website, you will find even more disclaimers on how they added foreign aid and other items into the Defense budget to raise that percentage, but you have to look very hard to find them. Whether you support the war or are against it, at least tell the truth!
As a resident of the Live Free or Die state, I just want to say that I don't like people coming from outside our state telling us how to think, and I surely don't like being misled or lied to. Tell these groups to tell us the truth, or stay home!
Mitt Romney Did Not Impress PEASubmitted by telyse on Wed, 11/14/2007 - 20:48.
The New York Times did not quote a "gay activist," (as you wrote) or anyone else. The reporter himself, Thomas B. Edsall, wrote that Mitt Romney was "a Massachusetts governor who favored abortion rights and gay rights." This is why a PEA student questioned Romney -- and, obviously, his condescending answer was not satisfactory to us. We're not the sort of young people to whom a baby boomer can simply say 'you're too young to understand.' We do understand. What we understand is that Romney HAS flip-flopped. Our laughter was an indicator of our indignation. We were certainly not reassured by his evasive answer and his obviously irritated manner. Please check your facts and please do not presume to interpret others so liberally.