Kilmer: “[Huckabee] on [Russert’s Meet the Press], Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee covered a list of what he said were Romney mischaracterizations of him and his records—[Huckabee] was effective here, and he did not slip when defending his foreign policy or his faith.”

December 30, 2007 in 2008, analysis, campaign communications, campaign communiques, campaign literature, campaign management, conservatism, election 2008, Evangelicals, GOP, incompetence, media, mitt romney, republicans, rhetoric, romney, strategy, stupidity, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
Tags: gov. mike huckabee, mark kilmer, meet the press, mtp, negative attacks, negativing campaigning, negativity, redstate.com, tim russert

Consistent with David Brody’s point that Romney’s attacks open up opportunities for Romney’s rivals to respond using earned media, Tim Russert of Meet the Press turned the microphone over to Gov. Huckabee this morning and allowed the Governor to answer each of Romney’s false and baseless charges one after the other. This is an excerpt from Kilmer of Redstate’s account, available in post titled The Sunday Morning Talk Shows—The Review:

Russert asked if Mitt Romney had said anything about Huckabee which was untrue. Huckabee started the list.

• Mitt claimed that Huckabee had reduced Meth sentences in Arkansas when the truth is that he signed a bill in 1999 which doubled Meth sentences, which are four times greater than those in Romney’s Massachusetts.
• Huckabee said that Romney accused him of giving “special breaks” to illegal immigrants. Actually, it was a bill concerning the children of such people who had “earned” scholarships, and it never made the legislature.
• Romney accused Huckabee of increasing spending “by some ridiculous amount,” and even the New York Times “took him apart” on this false claim.
• Huckabee said that Romney’s claim about tax increases was wrong because the tax increases in Arkansas were either court ordered or approved by the voters, such as the one to improve roads.
• Huckabee said that he left Arkansas with good roads, while Romney’s “were a mess” in Massachusetts.
• Romney claims that he did not raise taxes, when actually he did raise taxes in the form of fees by a half-billion dollars. [Huckabee] said that he raised taxes for “educational purposes” and for roads. (I take it, then, that he opposes abolishing the Department of Education.)

The formatting is ours, all ours.

Kilmer issues this coda to his account of Gov. Huckabee’s performance: … “It went on for a while. Russert’s questions, while not softballs, were not as tough as some of the questions I’ve seen asked here at RedState. Huckabee did not implode, by any stretch, and handled himself well” …

Our conclusion: What is happening in Iowa to Gov. Huckabee would offend anyone’s sense of fair play, even Russert’s. Hence Russert’s performance this morning. This is a part of the price Romney pays for his viciously negative campaign—others are coming to the defense of Romney’s rivals.

yours &c.
dr. g.d.

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Romney refuses to acknowledge that his church was wrong to exclude blacks; instead, Romney offers his father’s march with MLK as proof of his progressive values, yet there is no evidence that Romney’s father ever marched with MLK

December 19, 2007 in 2008, campaign communications, campaign communiques, campaign literature, conservatism, election 2008, GOP, incompetence, Iowa, media, mitt romney, republicans, romney, stupidity, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
Tags: david bernstein, dr. martin luther king, gov. george romney, meet the press, mormonism, mormons, mtp, phoenix, race, tom bevan

“I’ve been on the road for a couple of days, but I want to circle back to Mitt Romney’s appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday to make two points,” writes Tom Bevan in a realclearpolitics article titled Romney’s MTP Turn

First, I think Romney made a significant mistake by refusing to acknowledge that his church was wrong to discriminate against blacks up until 1978. This should have been a no-brainer, and his refusal to state the obvious was made even more pronounced by citing his father’s record of marching with Dr. Martin Luther King, his mother’s civil rights record, etc. – all of which was a tacit admission that the church’s policy of discrimination was wrong. So why not just say so? … etc.

Did Romney’s father march with Dr. Martin Luther King?—well, opinions differ.

“In the most-watched speech of his political career, speaking on ‘Faith in America’ at College Station, Texas, earlier this month, Mitt Romney evoked the strongest of all symbolic claims to civil-rights credentials: ‘I saw my father march with Martin Luther King,'” writes the estimable David Bernstein in a Phoenix exclusive titled Was it all a dream? EXCLUSIVE: Mitt Romney claims that his father marched with MLK, but the record says otherwise

He has repeated the claim several times recently, most prominently to Tim Russert on Meet the Press . But, while the late George W. Romney, a four-term governor of Michigan, can lay claim to a strong record on civil rights, the Phoenix can find no evidence that the senior Romney actually marched with King, nor anything in the public record suggesting that he ever claimed to do so.

Nor did Mitt Romney ever previously claim that this took place, until long after his father passed away in 1995 — not even when defending accusations of the Mormon church’s discriminatory past during his 1994 Senate campaign.

Asked about the specifics of George Romney’s march with MLK, Mitt Romney’s campaign told the Phoenix that it took place in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. That jibes with the description proffered by David S. Broder in a Washington Post column written days after Mitt’s College Station speech.

Broder, in that column, references a 1967 book he co-authored on the Republican Party, which included a chapter on George Romney. It includes a one-line statement that the senior Romney “has marched with Martin Luther King through the exclusive Grosse Pointe suburb of Detroit.”

But that account is incorrect. King never marched in Grosse Pointe, according to the Grosse Pointe Historical Society, and had not appeared in the town at all at the time the Broder book was published. “I’m quite certain of that,” says Suzy Berschback, curator of the Grosse Pointe Historical Society. (Border was not immediately available for comment.) …

… King had already left the state, and Romney did not participate in the Grosse Pointe walk, according to records from the time.

George Romney would later lead a 10,000-person march through Detroit, but not with King.

Although Broder’s book contained the brief mention, there is nothing in the public record to suggest that George Romney himself ever claimed to have marched with King.

Had George Romney ever marched with Martin Luther King Jr., it almost certainly would have been documented. From the mid-’50s through 1962, Romney was one of the country’s most prominent business leaders — for him to travel South for a civil-rights march would have been remarkable. From January 1963 on, as governor of Michigan and a presumed Presidential candidate, Romney was one of the most visible political figures in the country … etc.

yours &c.
dr. g.d.