If the recent cover stories in National Review and the
Weekly Standard are any indication, conservative
opinion-mongers are taken with the idea of Massachusetts Gov. Mitt
Romney running for president in 2008. But, given his record of
triangulation
on abortion, will pro-life voters be equally enthusiastic?
The answer will help determine the viability of Romney’s
candidacy. Not since Gerald Ford narrowly beat back Ronald Reagan’s
challenge at the 1976 Republican National Convention has the GOP
had a pro-choice presidential nominee. Abortion advocacy reduced
1990s Republican rising stars Bill Weld and Christine Todd Whitman
from vying for a place on the party’s national ticket to competing
for space in bookstore discount racks (although Weld at least had
the decency to stick to novels and spare us the lectures).
GOP pro-choicers who want to be president can try loudly
proclaiming their socially progressive credentials and promising to
rescue the party from the religious right. This was the path trod
by Sen. Arlen Specter and Gov. Pete Wilson in 1996 and neither
managed to make it to the Iowa caucuses. Or they can follow the
example of George H.W. Bush. He switched to the pro-life side
during the 1980 campaign and ended up on the next four GOP tickets
and in the Oval Office.
Romney quite sensibly appears to be opting for the latter
course. He described himself to USA Today as “personally
pro-life” and “in a different place” than he was when he averred
that “abortion should be safe and legal” during his 1994 race
against Sen. Ted Kennedy. John J. Miller reported in National
Review that in the event of a Romney presidential bid, “he’s
almost certain to run as an avowed pro-lifer.”
The theory is that pro-lifers welcome conversions. But in a
party where social conservatives are stronger today than in 1980,
they also value authenticity. Ronald Reagan may have signed a bill
liberalizing California’s abortion laws, but he didn’t for a decade
repeatedly affirm his support for Roe v. Wade as Romney
has. Can the Bay State governor satisfy doubters?
His current approach needs some work. Romney claims that as
governor of a pro-choice state, he has observed a “moratorium” on
abortion policy. Thus, he has not allowed abortion restrictions to
be loosened — such as when his 2002 Democratic rival Shannon
O’Brien called for 16-year-olds to be able to obtain abortions
without parental consent — or tightened.
But Romney never spoke of a moratorium during the 2002 campaign.
This new framing of the issue emerged only after the conservative
press began covering him as a possible presidential contender. In
his previous races, Romney has positioned himself as pro-choice but
slightly to the right of his Democratic opponents on abortion. This
has been true since 1994, when he ran for the U.S. Senate as a
pro-Roe candidate with the backing of Massachusetts
Citizens for Life.
Indeed, “muddled” is more often used to describe Romney’s
abortion views than “moratorium.” “The predictable result,” the
columnist Jeff Jacoby explained, “is that Romney has always been
distrusted by prochoice and prolife activists.”
That distrust has, perhaps inadvertently, been enhanced by
comments to the press by certain friends of Mitt. Political
consultant Mike Murphy landed on the front page of the Boston
Globe when he said Romney was “faking it” as pro-choice, while
personal friend Kem Gardner told the Salt Lake Tribune
that the governor was “waffling” due to the Bay State political
climate. Both subsequently retracted their claims.
In any event, it’s hard to see how either talk of a moratorium
or conflicting accounts of Romney’s abortion views from those
closest to him will motivate pro-lifers. For those who take the
issue most seriously, actions speak more loudly than confusing
words.
GOP aspirants who have tried nuanced appeals to pro-lifers don’t
have an impressive track record. Pete DuPont, for instance, ran in
1988 as a personally pro-choice candidate who nevertheless
advocated overturning Roe. In 1996, Lamar Alexander —
like Romney, a centrist governor with a pro-choice record — also
vowed to send abortion back to the states and adopted the pro-life
descriptor. Both positions might have carried more weight had he
actually campaigned in favor of rescinding Roe.
It’s also possible to overdo outreach to pro-lifers. In 1996,
Steve Forbes ran as the flat-tax candidate who favored popular
abortion restrictions but didn’t talk much about the issue. Four
years later, the publishing magnate was saying that banning
abortion was a higher priority for him than cutting taxes. The
change in emphasis probably gained him more activist endorsements
than primary votes. Marginal tax rates weren’t flattened, but
Forbes’s 2000 campaign was.
Romney still has time to avoid these missteps, and once freed
from the competing claims of red-meat Republicans and Massachusetts
blue-staters he may be able to formulate a less ambiguous position.
And unlike the abortion squishes who came before him, Romney is
likely to face a field with few strong pro-lifers at the top. It’s
hard to imagine Rudy Giuliani or John McCain taking as hard a line
on embryonic stem-cell research.
Mitt Romney is gaining fans among movement conservatives in
Washington. But more important is whether he can win pro-life votes
in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
