The conservative fiscal purists at the Club For Growth are less than thrilled with Republican presidential front runner Mitt Romney. In the latest from their series of ““white papers”” on the Republicans seeking the 2012 nomination, the Club has dug into Romney’s past and found him lacking.
“After a career in business, quickly finding a ‘solution’ seems to be his goal, even if it means more government intrusion as a means to an end,” the Club summarizes.
Needless to say, this is not the way the group would prefer to do things.
“To this day, Romney supports big government solutions to health care and opposes pro-growth tax code reform,” they wrote, “positions that are simply opposite to those supported by true economic conservatives.”
Just as his Democratic opponents do, the Club catalogs the long list of Romney’s altered positions on everything from abortion rights to climate change. Romney being the former governor of Massachusetts and the Club for Growth being the Club for Growth, the specter of the late Ted Kennedy also makes frequent appearances.
Some examples:
⢠Campaign finance
Mitt Romney’s position on political free speech has undergone a radical evolution. During his 1994 Senate race against Ted Kennedy, Romney took an outrageous position on campaign finance reform that put him to the left of the current McCain-Feingold legislation, arguing for campaign spending limits–unconstitutional even under Buckley v. Valeo–and the abolition of PACs … As a presidential candidate in 2008, Mitt Romney pivoted drastically, abandoning his old anti-First Amendment stance and taking the harshest position against McCain-Feingold of all the candidates.
⢠Entitlements
But one cannot talk about Romney’s record on entitlement reform without considering the universal healthcare plan Governor Romney helped craft in Massachusetts. The bill that Governor Romney signed with a grinning Ted Kennedy in the background on April 12, 2006 … Empirical evidence demonstrates that RomneyCare has failed to control health care costs, increased the size of government, and by its very nature introduced more government and less freedom into health care markets. Governor Romney should admit that RomneyCare is a failure, and soon.
There are somethings about Romney the group likes: they think he’s 100% reliable on tort reform, and they praise his record on charter school support in Massachusetts. But they have strong feelings on his support for the establishment Republican candidates the Club for Growth has taken on in the past couple years. They note that Romney supported Marco Rubio in the 2010 Florida Republican Senate primary but add that Romney made his endorsement “shortly before” Charlie Crist “left the GOP to run as an Independent.”
It’s safe to say the group is not a fan — but the Club for Growth is quick to say that as bad as Romney may be, they’d prefer him to President Obama.
“We have no doubt that Romney would move the country in a pro-growth direction,” they write. “He would promote the unwinding of Obama’s bad economic policies.”
Read the whole white paper here.
