Our Platform for Outlining Colorado’s Future

In an Illinois Review article Tyler Jones shows some of the harsh comments directed at flavor of the month Mike Huckabee, from conservatives. “He destroyed the conservative movement in Arkansas” “He was pro-life and pro-gun, but otherwise a liberal” “He has zero intellectual underpinnings in the conservative movement” "Mr. Huckabee was the only GOP candidate to refuse to endorse President Bush's veto of the Democrats' bill to vastly expand the Schip health-care program. Only he and John McCain have endorsed the discredited cap-and-trade system to limit global-warming emissions that has proved a fiasco in Europe."

REPORTER: Governor, there is a report today that a businessman says that a closed fundraiser in Vegas a couple weeks ago, he asked you a question about having an Islamic person in your cabinet and you said that based on the population of Muslims in the United States that you don't think it would be justified?   GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY: No. His question was did I need to have a Muslim in my Cabinet to be able to confront radical Jihad and would it be important to have a Muslim in my Cabinet and I said, 'No, I don't think that you have to have a Muslim in the Cabinet to be able to take on radical Jihad anymore than during the Second World War we needed to have a Japanese-American to understand the threat that was coming from Japan or something of that nature.' I just rejected that argument number one, and then number two, I point out that people who would be part of my Cabinet is something that I really haven't given a lot of thought to at this point, but I don't hav...

By: Tim Cruz National Review Online Monday, Nov 26, 2007 "From his first days in office as Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney understood that '[p]ublic safety is the single most important job of government.' As governor, Romney demonstrated his commitment time and time again to keeping families and their children safe from violent criminals, sexual predators, repeat drunk drivers and gang violence. "According to Department of Justice crime statistics, violent crime went down during Governor Romney's tenure. In 2006, the FBI violent crime rate ? which includes murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault ? was 447 per 100,000 inhabitants. This was a decrease of almost 8 percent from 2002 when the rate was 484.4. The violent crime rate was consistently below the national average. Assault and rape in particular fell roughly 15 percent and 2 percent, respectively. Other crimes likewise fell during Governor Romney's term in office, including mot...

Mitt Romney responds to judicial nomination questions, and checks in from the campaign trail. Monday, November 26, 2007 at 8:41 PM HH: Joined now by Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts. Governor, welcome back, hope you had a great Thanksgiving.   MR: It was a great Thanksgiving. A little touch football and a lot of turkey.   HH: Excellent. Now Governor, a lot of ground to cover. There's a controversy about Judge Tuttman, one of your appointees. Can you tell us how you came to appoint her, and your reaction to her decision to release the man who went out and murdered two young, wonderful people in Washington State?  MR: Yeah, as a matter of fact, I've appointed some sixty judges. And in each case, I wanted to find people who would be law and order judges and follow the law. This judge had served 17 years as a prosecutor, putting bad people away, and so I had every reason to believe that the judge would be a law and order judge. And ultimat...

Today, Romney for President launched its newest television ad, "Take Charge."    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpBqg6sKYB0   The ad highlights Governor Romney's record of enforcing our immigration laws and opposing efforts to increase the benefits for illegal immigration.  As President, Governor Romney will work to secure our border, reform our immigration system and fight sanctuary policies.    The ad will begin airing as part of the campaign's rotation today in Iowa and New Hampshire.  Script and viewing links are below.    Script For "Take Charge" (TV:30):   ANNOUNCER:  "Illegal immigration – we need smart, tough solutions, not just talk.   "What will it take to fix it?  Technology, new ideas, guts, values – Mitt Romney.   "He said no to driver's licenses for illegals; no to in-state tuition; fought for English in the classroom.   "The only candidate with a...

The False Conservative By Robert D. Novak Monday, November 26, 2007; A15 Who would respond to criticism from the Club for Growth by calling the conservative, free-market campaign organization the "Club for Greed"? That sounds like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards , all Democrats preaching the class struggle. In fact, the rejoinder comes from Mike Huckabee , who has broken out of the pack of second-tier Republican presidential candidates to become a serious contender -- definitely in Iowa and perhaps nationally. Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist advocate of big government and a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans. Until now, they did not bother to expose the former governor of Arkansas as a false conservative because he seemed an underfunded, unknown nuisance candidate. Now that he has pulled even with Mitt Romney for the Iowa caucuses and might m...

Last night, Howard Nemerov at the Media Research Council's NewsBusters blog reviewed Governor Romney's record on violent crime and found that "the overall [violent] rate dropped 7.8% from 484.9 in 2002 to 447.0 in 2006."  He concludes, "No matter the comparison––total incidents or rates per 100,000 population––Giuliani was wrong to state that Massachusetts saw a violent crime increase while Romney was governor."   http://newsbusters.org/blogs/howard-nemerov/2007/11/25/who-s-tougher-crime-romney-or-giuliani   And this morning, in an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Mayor Giuliani distorted Governor Romney's record again.  While Mayor Giuliani has apparently recognized his earlier error and dropped any reference to overall violent crime, Mayor Giuliani did claim that "aggravated assault … went up while he was governor."    RUDY GIULIANI: Boston Herald had a big piece on this about two months ago; crime, murder, aggravated assau...

The Romney Record : Governor Romney's Top Ten Line-Item Vetoes "I had the line-item veto. We ought to have that in Washington. It allows you to pick out the pork and pick out the waste and to zero in on it." – Governor Romney (Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes," 4/4/07) VETO #1: More Than 800 Budget Line-Items: For All Four Of The Fiscal-Year Budgets That Crossed His Desk, Governor Romney Used The Line-Item Veto Power More Than 800 Times. Over the course of four budgets, Governor Romney made over 300 line-item reductions, 350 line-item eliminations and struck language 150 times. (Chapter 26 Of The Commonwealth Of Massachusetts Acts Of 2003, Governor's Veto Message, 6/30/ 2003 ; Chapter 149 Of The Commonwealth Of Massachusetts Acts Of 2004, Governor's Veto Message, 6/25/ 2004 ; Chapter 45 Of The Commonwealth Of Massachusetts Acts Of 2005, Governor's Veto Message, 6/30/ 2005 ; Governor Mitt Romney, Memo To The Senate And House Of Re...

GIULIANI 'S INCREASINGLY " FUZZY " STATS Giuliani Falsely Claims That "Violent Crime" Went Up In Massachusetts : Yesterday, Giuliani Falsely Claimed That "Violent Crime " Went Up In Massachusetts . "'Gov. Romney did not have a good record in dealing with violent crime.' Giuliani pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket that listed FBI crime statistics for Massachusetts while Romney was governor. Murders were up 7.5 percent, robbery was up 12 percent, he said. 'He had an increase in murder and violent crime while he was governor,' Giuliani said. 'So it's not so much the isolated situation which he and the judge will have to explain _ he's kind of thrown her under the bus, so it's hard to know how this is all going to come out. But the reality is, he did not have a record of reducing violent crime.'" (Charles Babington, "Romney Calls On Judge He Appointed To Resign After Washington State Murder...

This article helped convince me that Romney, not McCain was the best presidential candidate.   Now I have tons of great reasons not to vote for Giuliani...   This latest article from Newsweek is a must read for anyone who is following the presidential election. It is in the Dec, 03 2007 Issue and is by Evan Thomas and Suzanne Smalley of NEWSWEEK.   Here are some of my favorite parts, but you need to read the whole thing.     http://www.newsweek.com/id/72121/page/1 On Sept. 16, 1992, the police in New York City held a rally that spun out of control. The cops wanted a new collective-bargaining agreement, and they were angry at Mayor David Dinkins for proposing a civilian review board and for refusing to issue patrolmen 9mm guns. More than a few of them tipsy or drunk, the cops jumped on cars near city hall and blocked traffic near the Brooklyn Bridge. According to some witnesses, they waved placards crudely mocking Mayor Dinkins, the first black m...

It must be infuriating for Romney to be in 2nd place to such a putz: "While Giuliani was ranting at moral decay, his personal life was a shambles. In Giuliani's last year in office, Donna Hanover learned that her husband was divorcing her when he gave a press conference. Giuliani's third wife, Judith Nathan, has provided fodder for the tabloids by wearing a tiara to a charity ball and seeming to enjoy Giuliani's perks and power a little too much ."    

From Time : "Giuliani's loyalty to his last police commissioner, Bernard Kerik, bordered on the blind. The two men had come to know each other when Kerik, acting as an off-duty cop, drove Giuliani during his first mayoral campaign in 1989 (Giuliani lost to Dinkins). Kerik was the sort of diamond in the rough Giuliani appreciated—a tough street cop who got things done. Giuliani has insisted that he did not know about Kerik's questionable dealings with two businessmen with alleged mob connections. City hall records reviewed by NEWSWEEK suggest that the mayor may have been briefed on some of these problems just before Kerik was appointed commissioner. But Giuliani has said he has no memory, and his tight palace guard remains close-mouthed. ("There were mistakes made with Bernie Kerik," Giuliani said earlier this month, adding that Kerik's wrongdoing should not outweigh his crimefighting successes.)"

Giuliani never found an equal to Bratton. The next commissioner, Howard Safir, was regarded as a "Yes Rudy" who tried too hard to please his master. ("I am very loyal to Rudy," Safir tells NEWSWEEK. "However, when I disagreed with him … I made sure I did it in private.") The police stepped up their stop-and-frisk campaign in poor, largely minority neighborhoods. A series of ugly police-brutality cases besmirched Giuliani's crimefighting record and alienated blacks and Hispanics. In 2000, when an undercover narcotics detective killed an unarmed security guard named Patrick Dorismond, who was black, Giuliani scoffed that Dorismond was no "altar boy." Actually, he was an altar boy—and had attended Bishop Loughlin high school.   From the Time article

More from the Time Article:   http://www.newsweek.com/id/72121/page/6 "Loyalty to Giuliani means staying out of his limelight. Police Commissioner William Bratton discovered that in January 1996, when he made the mistake of posing for the cover of Time magazine in a trench coat to tout New York's astonishing success at fighting crime. Giuliani was not pleased; he ordered city hall's lawyers to start investigating Bratton's expenses, and the commissioner was gone in a couple of months...  In truth, both men deserve credit for New York's turnaround. Bratton was a vocal apostle of the "broken window" theory of crime—that small acts of vandalism can create a lawless climate conducive to bigger crimes." But really, do you have to say anything else but:   Giuliani endorsed liberal Democrat Mario Cuomo

From Newsweek:   http://www.newsweek.com/id/72121/page/5   Loyalty has always been the greatest virtue to Giuliani, sometimes trumping all others. By loyalty, Giuliani's critics contend, he means "loyalty to Rudy." Disloyal subordinates learned this the hard way, even if they thought they were serving some higher master, like truth and justice. By the early '80s, Giuliani had risen to claim a top job in the Reagan administrationJustice Department. At the time, the department was investigating McDonnell Douglas, the aircraft manufacturer, for making foreign bribes. Without telling career prosecutors who had been working on the case for months, Giuliani met with McDonnell Douglas defense lawyers. The career prosecutors were upset that a top official had gone over their heads, and wrote a letter to Giuliani expressing "shock" and "dismay," and warning that his secret meeting with the defense could undermine the prosecution's case. The...

"The mayor's nasty side becomes more apparent once desperation sets in, and with all of the slipping poll numbers, it is certainly apparent that these negative attacks are coming for a reason," Madden said. "There is only one candidate in this race who has actually achieved health-care reform, and that's Gov. Romney. Mayor Giuliani can only recite talking points provided to him because he has neither a record or even a basic understanding of how health care markets work or how reform is achieved."

GIULIANI'S INCREASINGLY "FUZZY" STATS Giuliani Falsely Claims That "Violent Crime" Went Up In Massachusetts: Yesterday, Giuliani Falsely Claimed That "Violent Crime" Went Up In Massachusetts. "'Gov. Romney did not have a good record in dealing with violent crime.' Giuliani pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket that listed FBI crime statistics for Massachusetts while Romney was governor. Murders were up 7.5 percent, robbery was up 12 percent, he said. 'He had an increase in murder and violent crime while he was governor,' Giuliani said. 'So it's not so much the isolated situation which he and the judge will have to explain _ he's kind of thrown her under the bus, so it's hard to know how this is all going to come out. But the reality is, he did not have a record of reducing violent crime.'" (Charles Babington, "Romney Calls On Judge He Appointed To Resign After Washington State Murders," The...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 25, 2007 CONTACT: Romney Press Shop (857) 288-6390 A RECORD OF REDUCING CRIME IN MASSACHUSETTS GIULIANI'S INCREASINGLY "FUZZY" STATS Giuliani Falsely Claims That "Violent Crime" Went Up In Massachusetts: Yesterday, Giuliani Falsely Claimed That "Violent Crime" Went Up In Massachusetts.  "'Gov. Romney did not have a good record in dealing with violent crime.' Giuliani pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket that listed FBI crime statistics for Massachusetts while Romney was governor. Murders were up 7.5 percent, robbery was up 12 percent, he said.  'He had an increase in murder and violent crime while he was governor, ' Giuliani said. 'So it's not so much the isolated situation which he and the judge will have to explain _ he's kind of thrown her under the bus, so it's hard to know how this is all going to come out. But the reality is, he did not ...