Bottom Line: Gregg Jackson has backed away from playing the religion card against Romney. This is very good, but sadly his arguments against the governor are deeply flawed and badly sourced. It is hard to take them seriously as a result.
The Details:
Gregg Jackson, a radio host and conservative author, predicted that electing Mitt Romney, known Mormon, as president might end the Republic and Evangelicalism.
This seemed more than a bit overheated and merited a response.
The good news is that Jackson, who seems like an otherwise fine fellow from his web site, has shifted ground. He has abandoned an assault on Romney based on religion and instead is taking on his term as governor of Massachusetts.
There is nothing wrong with that, though I wish that Republicans would stop acting as if fellow Republicans who were not their favorites were Satan’s pal.
Now that Jackson has stopped predicting the end of the Republic from a Mormon president . . . after we have survived Mormons at basically every other level of government . . . he has decided to make a political argument.
Good for him, but Jackson argues his case illogically.
His article is the perfect example of how to destroy your case while making it. I will leave it to more political types to examine the details of the Jackson’s brief against Romney, but if Jackson wishes to be taken seriously, then he will have to clean up his style.
If the form of the argument fails, then the details don’t matter. You might get all the right materials to build a good house (oak, marble, and strong nails), but if your plan is rotten, then you are going to waste a great deal of good material.
A blog post or column is not a philosophical paper (snooze time!) or a Lincoln speech (who can write one?), but at least the rhetoric deployed should acknowledge the existence of basic rules of logic.
Jackson repeatedly confuses making charges with giving evidence, uses dubious sources, does not cite sources to back up serious claims, or invents hypothetical situations that are (to put it mildly) uncharitable.
I repeat my offer to debate Jackson on this topic in a civil manner.
(This article has two authors, but I will use Jackson’s name for simplicity.)
Here is Jackson:
Romney Secrets The Media Are Hiding From You
By Gregg Jackson
Friday, November 9, 2007
We noted last time that Jackson has a penchant for “secrets.” What secrets?
I am not that political (having much else to do), but have heard all the claims Jackson makes against Romney.
The charge of conspiracy demands serious evidence Jackson never gives.
Bill Buckley was right to purge the conservative movement of paranoid conspiracy mongers. Reagan was right to run on optimism and not as a public Eeyore.
Since we have all heard the arguments Mr. Jackson advances, his claim of a conspiracy of silence is false. On the other hand, giving your column a punchy title to get attention is forgivable if the rest of the column backs away from the opening.
I am a co-host of a Boston talk radio show “Pundit Review Radio.” My co-author, Paul, is a thirty year Boston journalist.
We recently authored a Townhall.com article on an Evangelical theologian who endorsed Mr. Romney and how historically unprecedented that endorsement was. Hundreds of angry people responded to that article- many of whom called us “bigots.”
This column repeats the claim that the Romney run (and Evangelical support for it) is “unprecedented” without examining Evangelical (or traditional Protestant) support for the earlier run by Mitt Romney’s father.
Jackson said that Romney as president might end Evangelicalism and the Republic.
If that is not bigotry, it is at least stupid.
As long as Mitt Romney keeps America focused on his religion, he may win the upcoming January primaries.
Having written an entire column on Romney’s religion, Jackson now argues that we should look beyond Romney’s religion. If Jackson had avoided his religious column, he would have a right to complain about the focus on Mormonism.
As it is, Jackson is like the Democrat who plays the race card and then complains about the race card being played
But as soon as Americans are able to penetrate the religion smokescreen and see his governor’s record, voters may think twice.
This is exactly the argument Gregg Jackson should have made in the first place, but he brought up Mormonism as the possible knell of doom for the Republic.
The media – liberal and conservative – have been a willing co-conspirator in keeping Mitt’s governing record a secret. Am I suggesting the Romney campaign deliberately focused America on his being a Mormon to hide his record as governor? You decide.
Does anyone seriously believe the Romney campaign has focused America on his Mormonism?
If so then Gregg Jackson is part of the Romney campaign, since he focused on Mormonism in his last column.
Go run a search on Romney. See if other campaigns, the media, and conservatives have ignored Romney’s record as governor.
As Jackson might say, we can all decide if Jackson is (once again) substituting a paranoid style for argument.
For your edification, here’s the real Mitt Romney.
1. Mitt is a liberal. How do you think he got elected to the most left wing state in America? He was as pro-abortion, pro-gay agenda, pro-gun control as Ted Kennedy when elected governor. He was pro-choice when he was elected and pro-abortion when he left the governor’s office. When he was elected governor, the Baked Bean State did not have gay marriage. When he left, it did. When he was elected, Massachusetts had a Republican governor for nearly two decades. When he left, it didn’t. What it had was a Hillary disciple who is now transforming the Cradle of Liberty into an amalgam of the Soviet Union, Sodom and Las Vegas. Imagine what Mitt could do as president.
As Jackson will later concede, Massachusetts has had a habit of electing Republican governors to balance out its one-party legislature.
His post is full of accusations, but no evidence for the accusations. It is easy to link to evidence, but Jackson does not do so. Saying Mitt is a liberal does not make him one.
He blames Romney for “gay marriage” even though this was a judicial decision.
He blames Romney for the actions of his Democrat successor.
This makes me dubious about the strength of the rest of the article.
2. He’s that liberal?! He gave Massachusetts a socialist government health care plan entitled “Commonwealth Care” that some call Hillarycare as he was walking out the door. And, apparently he didn’t know it included abortion as a health benefit. Because by then, he had discovered abortion was “wrong.”
Could it be that the Democrat legislature has changed the plan?
What are the merits of the plan? Who called the plan “Hillarycare?”
Is the plan socialist? Why? This sounds like a “reason,” but all it amounts to is extended name calling. This is typical of hit-and-run column writing: call names, make a lot of charges, and then let your opponents waste hours of time answering each one.
Instead it is time to point out that Mr. Jackson has not made an argument . . . he has only made unsubstantiated claims.
And speaking of health, Mitt presided over the opening of the most corrupt and most expensive public works project in U.S. history – The Big Dig tunnel-bridge system. This project killed nearly a dozen people in the 48 months since it opened. When an immigrant woman was crushed to death by a cement-ceiling panel that fell on her as she traveled through one of the new tunnels, Mitt went on TV and said he would get to the bottom of this dangerous, deadly project. But he didn’t. Here was a public safety issue a conservative could have made a presidential-run-reputation on, exposing the Democrat corruption and fixing the problems. But he ignored it, preserving the public health menace for future victims. Instead, he took campaign contributions from international Big Dig contractors.
A quick web search will show Big Dig started in the Reagan administration. It was full of corruption and apparently flawed design over its twenty years of construction. It has finally opened.
I can find no evidence the project killed more than two people.
In the weird Jackson world, Romney should have closed the Big Dig as its mere existence is a “public health menace.” I see no evidence of this or that that closing this vital Boston artery would have been necessary, but perhaps the authors could point out where they are getting their data.
3. I thought he was pro-life? Romney’s Massachusetts health care plan says “no.” The plan covers abortion. What kind of Pro-lifer thinks abortion should be part of his health care plan? Romney signed this bill into law after he claims he had a discussion with an anonymous Harvard doctor wherein he discovered abortion was morally wrong.
Would it be too cynical to suggest the Harvard doctor was a PHD at the Kennedy School of Government who gave him a lot of computer printouts on Republican voters showing they don’t like abortion? Was it then he “discovered” abortion was wrong ( i.e. the wrong position for a conservative presidential candidate)?
Unlike Reagan who had a true turnaround on abortion, Romney has ping-ponged back and forth on this issue for years. As a 1994 U.S. Senate candidate, he said he had believed for nearly a quarter century that abortion should be “safe and legal.” Yet by 2001, the Salt Lake City Tribune quoted him as saying, “I do not wish to be labeled pro-choice.”
A year later, running for governor in Massachusetts, Romney was definitely Pro-choice and promised he would not touch any abortion law. During a candidate’s debate, he was so firmly Pro-choice, he renounced an endorsement from Massachusetts’ Citizens for Life.
But last year in South Carolina, a modern day miracle occurred. Romney declared, “I am firmly Pro-life…I was always for life.”
Here is a charitable read on Romney (which Jackson cannot seem to muster):
Romney (as a religious man) was always personally pro-life. He hates abortion. He believed abortion should be legal (pro-choice), but was wrong. In this way, he always differed from politicians who are pro-abortion.
This is a bad position and Romney eventually changed his mind when faced by abortion extremists in Massachusetts.
The Democrat legislature has changed Romney’s health care plan after he left office and over rode several vetoes by the governor related to the plan.
What was Romney supposed to do about either?
Jackson has leveled serious charges without any evidence. For example, he engages in “conspiracy theorizing” by inventing a “school of government” adviser whose very existence he does nothing to substantiate.
But anyone can play at that game . . . how do we know Mr. Jackson did not write this column while in the pay of Tsarist activists in Russia? He could have done so after all. If it is possible, then Jackson apparently will consider it. It might be better if Jackson would only call a man a lier when he has evidence of it.
4. But he does stand for family values, right? If you think two guys getting married constitutes a family, then yes, he’s into family values. Publicly, he was as normal and upstanding a family values guy as you’ll see. But privately, he seemed to be working for the gay agenda. When the Massachusetts’ Supreme Court imposed gay marriage on the citizens of the Commonwealth, Romney could have exercised a “bill of address” to impeach the activist judges. But he didn’t. He signed something he didn’t have to directing town clerks to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples or be fired. One Justice of the Peace Linda Gray Kelley did lose her job because of her religious views against gay marriage.
Romney went even further however and directed his Department of Health to change the state marriage licenses to read “Party A” and “Party B” replacing “Husband” and “Wife.”Romney was under no legal obligation to do either of these things. Would a true family values governor do this?
He now claims to support a constitutional amendment to protect marriage. Yet in 2002 then governor Romney called a similar attempt to amend the Massachusetts’ Constitution “too extreme.”
He’s the kind of family values guy who distributes pink fliers proclaiming, “Mitt and Kerry wish you a great Pride Weekend” during “Gay Pride” events. Oh, he’s against the gay agenda!! And he’s for it.
Apparently, Jackson believes you have to oppose homosexual persons as persons in order to be pro-family.
Romney does not want to see homosexual persons persecuted, but he also does not equate their relationships with healthy families.
The record is clear that Romney did not like the court decision legalizing gay “marriage” in Massachusetts. He also acted in good faith to follow the order of the courts while following sane procedures to change that decision.
Extremists wanted him to act in a churlish and ineffective manner in the face of the court decision.
Romney acted as a governor and adult must and enforced the law of the commonwealth . . . even when he did not like that law. This is to his credit, but those who prefer ineffective grand standing to hard work will never be satisfied by adult behavior. All this information was an easy google away on Internet sources.
Jackson gives Romney’s every action the worst interpretation.
5. But he’s a fiscal conservative, right? When it comes to spending money, he is more liberal than Ted K. He’s spent the gross national product of small nations on media, which accounts for all the good press he’s gotten. Ninety percent of voters may not want him, but 99 percent of the media loves him - even conservative talk radio show hosts.
Big spenders Hillary and Ted K praised the health care law signed by Romney. Coincidentally, it is quite similar to a plan unveiled by Hillary dubbed, “Healthy Choices.” Romney Care increases government mandates, regulations, costs and bureaucracy with less choice for consumers. The Congressional Budget Office noted that this level of government intervention and regulation was “unprecedented.”
Unprecedented – as in – even the out-of-control socialist Democrats hadn’t gone this far. Sally Pipes, of the Pacific Research Institute who reviewed Romney Care in a recent Wall St. Journal article said the governor’s plan was in “intensive care” right after birth. Only months after going into effect, the plan was costing Bay Staters $150 million more than the public was first told.
Premiums are nearly double what Romney promised. Keep in mind, Massachusetts already has the highest health care costs in the world. And Mitt increased them. Let’s connect the dots.
RomneyCare will take “Taxachusetts” into the 75 percent tax rate. That’s his fiscal legacy to the place American Democracy began. Imagine what Mitt could do as president.
At least this is an argument with evidence . . . but the sources are all suspect and the tone is hyperbolic in the extreme. Still there is grist here for the mill . . . though Romney’s health care plan deserves better scrutiny than Jackson who blames Romney for what a Democrat legislature did when he was out of office.
6. But he’ll elect conservative judges, right? Romney loves to preach passionate sermons against “judicial activism.” He promised to nominate strict conservative constructionists to the federal bench. The problem is, his record disagrees. The Boston Globe reports that as governor, Romney “passed over GOP lawyers for three quarters of the 36 judicial court vacancies he faced, instead tapping registered Democrats or Independents including two gay lawyers who have supported expanded same-sex rights.”
Massachusetts politics, voters should be reminded, is unique. Republicans are a tiny minority. It is hard to get anything done if you don’t work with the saner Democrats. Still this arguments is sourced (though without a hotlink to the Boston Globe article which is suspicious) and written in a sane manner.
7. Are you saying he can’t be trusted? Ted K called him John Kerry. The term he used was “Multiple Choice Mitt,” i.e. Mitt takes numerous positions on issues. He’s for it, against it and – oh what the heck – he’s such a nice guy he agrees with both sides. When it comes to issues Ted is right, Mitt looks like John Kerry. The good thing is voters seem to understand Romney better than the media. A recent Pew Center Poll found only 12 percent of respondents thought of Mitt Romney when the word “honest” was presented to them-the lowest percentage of the four major Republican candidates.
When was Ted Kennedy a good source on Republican candidates?
This is the nadir of sourcing in the column.
It is absurd to quote a liberal foe’s name calling of a Republican as a good source on that candidate.
What was Mitt Romney’s name recognition amongst the big four in the Pew poll?
For all you Iowa-New Hampshire-South Carolina gun owners, keep this in mind. Mitt is for and against the 2nd amendment. While campaigning in New Hampshire last April, he said to a man wearing an NRA hat that he was a “life long hunter.” Romney’s campaign quickly issued a retraction, admitting he’d only hunted twice in his life. He declared his love for Massachusetts’ fascistic gun laws and favors the Brady Law, which the NRA opposes. Perhaps the time will come when he “discovers” the second amendment is a good thing. But it can only happen during an election campaign.
This seems like a fair criticism. Romney blew it when he said he was a “life long hunter.” Every candidate makes gaffes and this was one for Romney.
8. Well then, what’s all this about Mitt being the “pragmatic” Republican choice? Ah yes. Keep in mind, pragmatic means “what works.” Mitt has a voter approval rating down around that of the Pelosi congress, in spite of all the media’s acting as his press agent. Voters don’t trust him. The idea that he is the Hillary-slayer is at odds with his record, which…uh… has much in common with Hillary, in particular the gay-friendly, socialist health care stuff.
Dealing with national polls at this stage of the race for a little known candidate is absurd. In the states where he is running hard, Romney is doing very well or leading in the polls.
The last sentence is just fantasy-land material. Romney is not in favor of socialized medicine. It is more “guilt by association.”
If pragmatic means “what works,” then what is it about Mitt that works? When most Americans wouldn’t vote for Mitt in spite of all the money he’s thrown out and all the media glorification, doesn’t that seem to be the opposite of pragmatism? Contrary to conservative talk radio common wisdom, Mitt is the un-pragmatic choice. If Mitt does to America what he did to the “Birthplace of American Democracy,” America will be in a nose-dive by 2012.
Romney was a hugely successful business leader. This is not mentioned
He saved an Olympics.
He was a decent governor in a state where it is very hard for Republican to govern.
He has good communication skills.
Apparently, Jackson will not limit his doom-and-gloom predictions. Romney will put America into a “nose dive?”
Is that really reasonable?
Co-author Paul Dinger is a 30 year veteran Boston journalist writing a book entitled “The Secret Meaning of America.”
One can hope his book will adopt a calmer and more reasonable tone.
Gregg Jackson is a radio talk show host on WRKO in Boston and author of “Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies: Issue By Issue Responses to the Most Common Claims of the Left from A to Z.”
I will happily debate Mr. Jackson on his tone, his argument style, and his belief that the Republic is so fragile that electing a Mormon might end our way of life.