hurricanemaxi
Joined: 04 Nov 2011
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 Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2012 7:41 am Post subject: Romney Calls Himself ‘Severely Conservative’ |
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Mitt Romney, pushing to retain front-runner status in the Republican presidential race and build credibility with voters who have resisted him, told party activists he was a “severely conservative” governor who would govern that way in the White House.
The former Massachusetts chief executive leads in the hunt for convention delegates while failing to spark passion among the anti-abortion and anti-spending voters who form his party’s backbone. He veered off his prepared script at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington yesterday to drive home his message that he shares the values of those voters.
Romney, 64, said his upbringing instilled in him belief in religious liberty and economic opportunity; his business background as a private-equity executive reinforced his fiscal frugality; and his government service in Democrat-dominated Massachusetts confirmed his strong opposition to abortion and gay marriage.
“I fought against long odds in a deep-blue state,” Romney said, referring to the color designating Democratic-leaning states in U.S. political vernacular. “But I was a severely conservative Republican governor.”
Romney embellished prepared remarks circulated by his campaign, in which he was to describe himself simply as “a conservative governor.”
‘Front Lines’
“I have been on the front lines,” he said at the conference, “and expect to be on those front lines again.”
He sought to burnish his credentials with party activists after a trio of losses in nominating contests Feb. 7 that highlighted his political weaknesses. To what degree he succeeded at CPAC will be partly gauged by how he fares in straw-poll results disclosed today as the conference ends.
Rivals Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich also addressed the CPAC gathering yesterday, offering themselves as truer conservatives than Romney -- though without directly criticizing him.
Gingrich, 68, who spoke after the other two candidates, repeatedly decried the “establishment” as having “contempt for conservative ideas.”
“All of you have seen the Washington establishment and the Wall Street establishment pile on top of me,” he said. “All of you have seen them say things that were just profoundly false. And there’s a good reason for that: This campaign is a mortal threat to their grip on the establishment, because we intend to change Washington, not accommodate it.”
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