— From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
For a brief moment on Wednesday, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney actually sounded presidential — a rarity in the nasty, neolithic Republican presidential campaign.
“Look, the idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a woman, a husband and wife — I’m not going there,” Romney told a television interviewer in Ohio.
Romney further said that he opposed the amendment (to a transportation bill, no less) sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., that specifically would have allowed employers to creep deeply into the bedroom, taking away individual choices so that employers (job creators!) could have more power.
Perhaps Romney forgot he was running in a Republican primary that has seen acolytes cheer the rush into war, Texas’ high execution rate and allowing someone without health insurance to die so that the public wouldn’t have to pick up the tab to save his life.
Romney’s handlers quickly admonished their candidate for his burst of sanity. The candidate then immediately called a conservative radio talk show in Boston to say, “Of course, I support the Blunt amendment.”
Today’s political news cycle is measured not in hours, but in minutes. Moments after the video of Romney’s reasonable, grown-up and proper answer on contraception was posted on the Internet, Web administrators were hitting the “update” button with a statement from the Romney camp saying that their man had misunderstood the question.
It might have been the fastest flip in the history of political flip-flops. Too bad. Romney could have been on the right side of history. The Blunt amendment was voted down 51-48 Thursday in the Senate, despite Republicans’ attempts to portray it as a battle over religious liberty, instead of what it was: an attempt to add one more layer of bureaucracy between a woman and her doctor. Perhaps now our elected leaders and potential future presidents will turn their attention to more pressing matters.
— From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch