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Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Debate Clarifies Romney on Lilly Ledbetter

     To be sure, the signals and noises being put out by the Romney campaign is still murky. Last night the President directly called Romney on failing to tell us where he stands on Lilly Ledbetter.

     Romney couldn't give a straight answer and today Romney's former Lieutenant General from Massachusetts, Kerry Healy, claimed that asking him about the gender equity bill-or for that matter about his stance on Kris Kobach's "Papers Please" legislation is just gotcha politics. Gender pay is of no interest to American women, just jobs.

    Women don't care what you pay them, just offer them a job, seems to be Romney's argument here:

     "TPM asked Kerry Healey, Romney’s former lieutenant governor in Massachusetts, if she could rebut Obama by describing the governor’s position on that bill."

     “He’s not going to have his campaign defined by what the Obama campaign wants to talk about,” she replied. “Governor Romney gave the answer that women need to know, which is that he has deliberately gone out and made sure that women were well represented and well treated and respected in his workplace and he wants to make sure that that’s the case in workplaces around the country.”
As for the specific bill: “Saying ‘will you sign this, would you support that,’ this is just a campaign tactic,” she said. “I think you should look at what Mitt Romney has done.”

     http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/romney-surrogates-dance-around-equal-pay-immigration-position.php?ref=fpa

     Yep. Asking about Romney's position on any specific position or specific piece of legislation is just politics. The Romney team's attitude to Lilly Ledbetter is kind of like what Barry Goldwater's attitude in 1964 was to the Voting Rights Act. Just because he opposed legislation that would actually stop segregation doesn't mean he opposed segregation.

     Today a Romney adviser gave us the most clarity we've ever gotten from the Romney team on Lilly Ledbetter-though, of course, that's still not very much. However they have broken new ground-particularly in confusion:

      "Had Mitt Romney been president in 2009, he would not have signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, a top adviser to the Republican nominee told The Huffington Post Tuesday night."

        "Now that the law has been passed, Romney has no plans to get rid of it, that adviser, Ed Gillespie, added. But Romney didn't support it while it made its way through Congress."

        http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/17/mitt-romney-lilly-ledbetter_n_1973446.html

        So is he for Lilly Ledbetter? Basically, both for it and against it. This is more or less what he tries to do with every issue. It's what he does with ObamaCare-repeal it, though also take credit for passing it. Financial reform? For it but not for Dodd-Frank-but is for some things in D-F.

         On abortion, it's oppose it yet also claim that he will do nothing to overturn it. If Romney says he won't repeal LL now, then this must mean it's been a good law-better than he had thought at the outset which is why he wouldn't have signed it initially.

         Between this, his strange "binders full of women" comments, his promise to end Planned Parenthood and ObamaCare-which has many services and benefits for women-hopefully this was clear to some of those females who allegedly started to see Romney in a new light thanks to his Orwellian first debate performance.

         Romney's position is no different than someone who opposed civil rights but now assures us that he's changed his mind-interestingly, Romney didn't actually move away from anti-segregation until 1977.
   

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