At least we can all agree he can't be trusted
Do you have whiplash yet from Mitt Romney and all his lies and flip-flops and clarifications on women's health care?
Well, you're not the only one:
Obama singled out abortion as one of the issues on which Romney has recently and abruptly tried to “cloud” his position. [...]
“This is another example of Governor Romney hiding positions he’s been campaigning on for a year and a half,” Obama said.
“Is it a lie?” Sawyer asked.
“No, I actually think… when it comes to women’s rights to control their own health care decisions, you know, what he has been saying is exactly what he believes,” said Obama.
“[Romney] thinks that it is appropriate for politicians to inject themselves in those decisions.”
Of course President Obama won't come right out and call Mitt Romney a liar, but make no mistake: Mitt Romney is lying his ass off.
In an interview with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register on Tuesday, Romney said:
There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.
Which of course was a lie, because, as the president pointed out, Romney's been running on an extreme anti-choice agenda for a year and a half. That's why the Romney campaign corrected him and said that
of course Romney would pursue an anti-choice agenda.
But that wasn't the only lie in Romney's interview. He also lied his ass off about his position on birth control coverage. Earlier this year, when he was still trying to woo his rabid base, he joined the rest of his party in supporting the Blunt Amendment to give employers the right to decide what kinds of health care their employees should be allowed to have. In trying to Etch A Sketch his way to being moderate again, he said employees should be allowed to decide what kind of health care coverage they prefer. In other words, a total flip-flop from his earlier "severely conservative" position.
Trying to appear moderate only landed Romney in trouble with his base again, so his campaign immediately started calling the professional anti-choicers to assure them that of course Mitt is still as rabidly anti-choice as they are. He didn't mean to say he wouldn't pursue an anti-abortion agenda; it's just that the question was really confusing.
(Mitt gets confused by questions quite easily, forcing his campaign to then clarify that, no, he actually meant the exact opposite of what he said. Something you definitely want in a president, right?)
Meanwhile, the campaign has Paul Ryan insisting that he and Romney are "unified" in their rabid opposition to women's health care, and their position "is consistent and hasn’t changed." And except for Romney's 10,000 flip-flops, he's right!
So now Romney has shifted once again away from trying to appeal to the moderates by pretending he's not as extreme as the rest of his party—and his running mate—and he's back to trying to assure his base that of course he's as extreme as the rest of his party and his running mate. Today, he even repeated his months-old vow to defund Planned Parenthood, a promise he'd made back when he was still trying to prove just how "severely conservative" he can be.
The president may be unwilling to call Romney a liar, but considering that Romney has now taken about a dozen different positions on women's health care just in the past 24 hours, there's one fact everyone should be able to agree on: Mitt Romney cannot be trusted.