Cliff Dunn

I know what kind of week Mitt Romney has had. The former more-or-less unquestioned GOP nominee began last weekend offering nervous conservatives assurances that he has what it to takes to be the heir to Ronald Reagan. In a similar fashion, I spent last week trying to be an honest broker and explain to friends, gay and straight, why Romney isn’t exactly bad for “the gays,” but lacks the testicular fortitude to tout his true feelings to his gay supporters, and so sucks up to our political enemies. In this, he resembles in some ways his hoped-for opponent, President Obama.

“My family, my faith, my businesses– I know conservatism because I have lived conservatism,” the candidate told delegates last Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (C-PAC) in Washington, DC.

The former Massachusetts governor told the thousands assembled that, “I understand the battles we conservatives must fight because I have been on
the front lines.” Romney called on the delegates to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and ultimate victory over President Barack Obama  in November.

I sympathize with Romney in a way I sympathized with the now-defunct candidacy of his distant cousin and GOP rival Jon Huntsman, who was also not a “red meat” baiter of the far right fringe (who vote in droves during primary season and who have taken turns playing footsie first with fellow candidate Newt Gingrich, and then Rick Santorum). Unlike Huntsman, who never engaged in the politics of hate speech, Romney is forced to give lip-service to bigots (who would despise his Harvard education if they knew he possessed it) in a language that dishonors that Ivy League foundation for his political leadership.

I likewise blame “insider” Ron Paul for lacking the honesty to call his bigotry what it is. I admire his libertarian assertion that all citizens should be entitled to the same rights and benefits, while at the same time I despise his cowardly use of DOMA to Keep Gays Out of federal recognition, while he weakly invokes states-rights as his excuse. Paul, Paul: why do you persecute me?

Last week, Romney’s campaign took it on the chin after the candidate lost a triple crown of primary races to challenger Rick Santorum. The former Pennsylvania senator won first-place in Republican caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota and a non-binding primary in Missouri. Of the remaining contenders, Santorum, who has compared “consensual sex within your home” to “bigamy” and “incest,” has positioned himself as the guardian of the GOP social conservative wing’s agenda.

Romney refuses to concede the right side of the playing field. “I was a severely conservative Republican governor,” Romney argued. Severely conservative? I thought that being conservative, like being pregnant, is a binary state: you either are or you aren’t. On Friday, Romney told the C-PAC delegates that he is a non-Washington outsider. “I am the only candidate in this race, Republican or Democrat, who has never worked a day in Washington,” he said. “I don’t have old scores to settle or decades of cloakroom deals that I have to defend.”

Although Romney took shots at the current administration’s perceived record ["If we lead with conviction and integrity, then history will record the Obama presidency as the last gasp  of liberalism's great failure and a turning point for the conservative era to come"], he did not note his own diversity of opinions on social issues, notably
gay marriage.

On Friday, the candidate touted his opposition to marriage equality while he was in the Massachusetts state house:  “I successfully prohibited out-of-state couples from coming to our state to get married and then going home. On my watch, we fought hard and prevented Massachusetts from becoming the Las Vegas of gay marriage.” Oh for the Mitt Romney who challenged then-Sen. Ted Kennedy in 1994 to become one of those “insiders” who “[work every] day in Washington.” That Romney, who was 18 years away from throwing LGBT Americans under the Gingrich-Santorum bus, wrapped himself in a big-old-rainbow and announced “I am more convinced than ever before that as we seek to establish full equality for America’s gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent.”

It is a long way to November, and it remains to be seen if Obama is a one-term president or finishes the job he began for LGBT Americans with DADT and federal employee partner rights. A lot of politicians, Obama and Romney among them, agonize publicly over their policy positions and send the occasional “wink” to supporters they dare not address less obliquely. Romney may turn into the kind of “effective leader” that LGBT Americans need. But I wish that he was sending more winks to us than to Fred Phelps.

Cliff Dunn - Editor

Cliff Dunn is the Editor of Florida Agenda. He can be reached at Editor@FloridaAgenda.com.