From Deseret News archives:
Exactly how Reaganesque is Romney?
It seems like a surefire way to appeal to the diehard conservatives that the former governor of liberal Massachusetts needs to win the Republican presidential nomination.
In Myrtle Beach, at the end of a long campaign day one night last week, he was more emphatic than ever about the Great Communicator as a crowd of about 200 listened.
"I take inspiration from the strength Ronald Reagan talked about," Romney said. "It was his view that the right way to overcome challenges was for the country to strengthen itself."
Yet Romney wasn't always such a Reagan fan.
In 1994, when he ran for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, he said, "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush."
Romney spent years in the state registered as "unenrolled," or unaffiliated with a political party, and in 1992 he voted for former Sen. Paul Tsongas, a liberal Democrat, in the Massachusetts Democratic presidential primary.
Romney refused repeated requests to talk about his links to Reagan. Campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said that Romney's 1994 "independent" quote is out of context, that the vote for Tsongas was a vote against Bill Clinton and that not enrolling in either major party was common in Massachusetts.
Critics, however, charge that Romney's enthusiastic embrace of Reagan is another convenient, expedient Romney lunge to the right.
"He didn't support Ronald Reagan," said Mark Salter, a senior adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of Romney's rivals. Romney's promise to carry on Reagan's legacy is more evidence of "Mitt Romney's bizarro world," Salter added.
"This guy didn't even support Ronald Reagan," former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said disdainfully on an MSNBC show last month.
Fehrnstrom urged looking at the entire 1994 exchange between Romney and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., whom Romney was challenging at the time.
Recent comments
It reminds me of sniveling little middle-schoolers the way Romney's...
Eve L. | Dec. 26, 2007 at 11:51 a.m.
Reagan was a liberal Democrat until the 1950's. He was also a...
Ryan T. | Dec. 26, 2007 at 9:05 a.m.
I voted for Dukakis, Mondale, Carter and Clinton over the years....
Sam Deakins | Dec. 26, 2007 at 8:49 a.m.
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