I wasn’t planning on writing a Round-up today for one simple reason.  I’m tired.  Add to that the fact there wasn’t much of anything worth commenting on at post time and I was well prepared to let today go and catch up later.
 
Then ABCNews saw fit to publish the obviously badly researched piece written by Teddy Davis.  I’m not sure what to make of Mr. Davis.  He is either lazy, biased, or a bit of both.  He wrote a hit piece on Mitt on (what else) abortion – taking aim at Mitts pro-choice stance by claiming Mitt has flipped (again) on the issue.
 
Davis claims to have a new angle on the issue because Mitt favors the overturning of Roe v. Wade as well as a Human Life Amendment which would protect unborn children under the 14^th Amendment to the US Constitution.  Mr. Davis sees daylight between the two positions when, in fact, there is none.
 
Overturning Roe v. Wade would return the abortion issue to each individual state where it could be regulated as the state saw fit.  Some states would outlaw the procedure entirely, others would regulate it differently.  Either way, the legal status of abortion would change. 
 
Mitt also favors going the federal route with something similar to the Human Life Amendment.  Different angle, same result.  Roe v. Wade – the holy grail of liberal politics – would no longer be the Law of the Land.  Mr. Davis considers this a flip, or a flop, or both.  Mr. Davis is, at best, misguided.  At worst he’s a bad student of Mitt’s position.  Mitt has reiterated his abortion stance in several different forums over the past year or so.  The only thing muddled here is Mr. Davis’ attention to detail
 
Moving on to the Blogosphere, I caught RedState’s Mark Kilmer.  He spent $5 plus shipping for a copy of Lou Cannon’s Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power and used this new found knowledge to also assail Mitt’s abortion stance.
 
Let me state for Kilmer’s benefit that there are few people who hold the Gipper in as high esteem as I do.  That said, Reagan was a man and made mistakes as California’s Governor and this nation’s President.  As governor he signed into law what was, at the time, one of the nation’s most liberal abortion laws.  Kilmer details the inside debate on the bill, but the bottom line is, Reagan signed it into law.  He shortly came to regret that decision, but it was his.
 
Therefore, and it gives me no pleasure in pointing this out, as a governor, Ronald Reagan was functionally Pro-Choice – even though such labels did not exist at the time.  Perhaps he did behave, as Cannon opined, as if he were “lost at sea” but when the time came, he put his name on the dotted line of a pro-choice bill.  Those are the facts.  Facts, as Reagan was fond of saying, are stubborn things.
 
There is no argument that Reagan was a convert to the Pro-Life view of the abortion issue.  Again, facts are facts.
Mitt is also a convert to that same viewpoint.  Yes, when he ran for Senate, and again for Governor, he ran as a Pro-Choice candidate even though he was personally Pro-Life.  That said, when the issue of life came before him as Governor, he came down on the side of life – every time.
 
So, Mr. Kilmer, the most you can get Mitt on is – perhaps – a bad choice of phraseology.  Perhaps he shouldn’t have used the word “adamantly” when referring to Reagan’s Pro-Choice actions.  I’ll give you that.
 
As for myself, and I’d suspect a good majority of American, I’m more concerned with action than I am with rhetorical word-play.  Mitt’s actions as Governor put him firmly in the Pro-Life camp – someplace he will find himself alongside people like Ronald Reagan.
 
To put it bluntly, I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for a retraction or an apology – much less an explanation.  If you’re going to look for daylight between where Reagan stood and where Mitt stands, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
 
End Memo.  Good night.