Mitt Romney 2002 Planned Parenthood Questionnaire Mitt Romney's political positions seem to switch depending upon which year and what type of electoral base he faces. It's not a surprise that Red State's Erick Erickson proclaimed that Mitt
December 7, 2011

Mitt Romney 2002 PP Questionaire.jpg
Mitt Romney 2002 Planned Parenthood Questionnaire

Mitt Romney's political positions seem to switch depending upon which year and what type of electoral base he faces. It's not a surprise that Red State's Erick Erickson proclaimed that Mitt Romney is the Harriet Miers of Republican candidates and has only one principle mission in life: to be president.

I’ve been reading the 200 pages of single spaced opposition research from the John McCain campaign on Mitt Romney. There is no issue I can find on which Mitt Romney has not taken both sides. He is neither liberal nor conservative. He is simply unprincipled. The man has no core beliefs other than in himself. You want him to be tough? He’ll be tough. You want him to be sensitive? He’ll be sensitive.
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Along the way, he’ll drop lots of coin to grease the skids for himself. Mitt Romney is the silly putty of politicians — press on him real hard and he’ll take on whatever image you press into him until the next group starts pressing.

Republican billionaires have a fantastic track record of getting Republican opinion leaders to support them and an even better track record at losing elections. Mitt Romney will be no different.

There's no example more striking than his 2002 campaign to become Governor of Massachusetts. The state is typically blue and for him to run for the highest office there he had to become as pro-choice as his Democratic opponent Shannon O'Brien was. Check out his questionnaire form above in which he signed his name for Planned Parenthood. Romney's birthday is March 12, 1947, which means he was more than 50 years old when he filled this out. It's truly amazing to see him switch on a dime into present day anti-choice Mitt, chameleon-like, and it would appear as if 2002 Romney never existed.

Jennifer Rubin wrote this piece in the Weekly Standard a few years ago and I found the document to go along with her research.

A recent Internet video highlighted comments made during a 1994 debate against Sen. Edward Kennedy in which Romney declared that he supported a "woman's right to choose." Romney quickly distanced himself from those comments, winning praise from conservative pundits. But a look at Romney's second campaign, the 2002 race for Massachusetts governor, reveals that his pro-choice stance and support for embryonic stem cell research were clear and ardent less than five years ago.

In the spring of 2002 Romney completed a Planned Parenthood questionnaire. Signed by Romney and dated April 9, 2002, it contained these responses:

Do you support the substance of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade? YES

Do you support state funding of abortion services through Medicaid for low-income women? YES

In 1998, the FDA approved the first packaging of emergency contraception, also known as the "morning after pill." Emergency contraception is a high dose combination of oral contraceptives that if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, can safely prevent a pregnancy from occurring. Do you support efforts to increase access to emergency contraception? YES

Romney also completed the questionnaire of the National Abortion Rights Action League, or NARAL (now called NARAL Pro-Choice America), with this statement:

I respect and will protect a woman's right to choose. This choice is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not mine and not the government's. The truth is no candidate in the governor's race in either party would deny women abortion rights. So let's end an argument that does not exist and stop these cynical and divisive attacks that are made only for political gain.

As he had with Planned Parenthood, Romney answered "Yes" to questions asking whether he supported Roe v. Wade and opposed attempts to restrict abortion. After completing the questionnaire, Romney met with three NARAL executives. In this meeting, NARAL executives recount, Romney evidenced no hesitation about his pro-choice views. He also tried to pique the executives' interest in endorsing him by bluntly acknowledging that he had higher political aspirations, saying, "You need someone like me in Washington." Moreover, those present recall that Romney argued that his election would make him credible in the Republican party nationally and thus help "sensible" Republicans like him overshadow more conservative elements in the GOP.

As we've recently witnessed, the religious right hid as long as they could in the tea party until the deadline came up for HCR in 2010 and then they came out with guns a-blazing and tried to destroy the entire plan over federal funds being allowed to pay for a woman's right to choose. And Rep. Stupak, a pro-life Democrat who supported this outrageous stance lost his seat in the process; even those pro-lifers couldn't protect him from voters upset at him being the leader in a charge to deny woman the right to decide.

Romney will say anything he can to make the religious tea party believe that he's one of them on what's still their highest priority in America. It's not jobs, it's not health care, it's not energy, it's not education or foreign policy. It's "choice." I wonder how he'll explain away this PP form he filled out. These aren't records on his hard drive his staffers can hide. Maybe he'll pull out some form of "developmental stage" theories that can prove his floppy behavior. There certainly are enough for him to choose from.

I've never, ever seen a politician flip flop through his entire career on every single issue before him. I'll have more on the 2002 election later including how he flipped on stem cell research after he was elected Governor which was equally disgusting.

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