Wednesday, June 28, 2006

What Adam Reilly Missed (on Mitt and the Marriage Amendment)

Adam at Talking Politics had a good post on some real Mitt Romney hypocrisy, but there was a point he missed.

Mitt Romney had the following to say,
"The people here today have followed the law, followed the process established in the Constitution, and gathered an astounding 170,000 signatures."
Yet, there was mass-fraud committed against possibly thousands of Massachusetts citizens by the company hired to collect signatures to try to get gay marriage banned in Massachusetts.

To me, it is one of the pivotal moments in Massachusetts politics over the past few years. I saw a Governor that was probably happy it happened. I saw an Attorney General who was running for Governor and claimed to support equality in marriage, yet didn't put all that much effort into coming to the bottom of such a disgrace (when it was documented on TV!). I saw distant relatives and close aquaintances who signed on the dotted line and wondered if they just weren't fans of equality or were one of the thousands scammed.

So for Mitt Romney to pretend that this was a completely legal process obviously peeves me in ways that I just don't even have the proper words to describe. Not that I have to tell many readers this, but don't believe a word that comes out of that cockroach's mouth. Good riddens, Mitt Romney. Have fun on the campaign trail (not that he's going to win).

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even assuming 10% of the signatures were fraudulent (which is really pushing it) there is still over 150,000 signatures on this petition, even with 20% fradulent, over 125,000...isn't that enough to warrant it to be decided via a referendum? If not, what would?

Ryan said...

The number doesn't really matter, it's the whole point of the matter. There was major fraud - in the thousands - and there was hardly a peep out of it from either Romney or Reilly (and it was pretty much Reilly's job to make sure things were going down legally).

Whether or not we have this vote doesn't matter (it's going to lose, so I don't care)... However, I'm not going to let Mitt get away with outright lying now or ever - and that's what it was, an outright lie. There's no way he didn't know about this fraud issue.

Anonymous said...

So you think there was no way Romney didn't know about the fradulent activies of a person hired by a subcontractor hired by a organization that Mitt Romney neither chairs, nor runs, nor funds...

I just think that your efforts would better spent attacking the subcontractor than the Governor. Scapegoating won't get you anywhere, but legitamate claims against a fraud-inducing organization, that is stuff even I'd support, despite the fact they work towards an end I support.

Ryan said...

I'm not saying he knew about it during the event, I'm saying he must have heard about it over the months and months since it happened. It could even be a full year or more since the initial reports are out.

And if he doesn't know about it, shame on him. It's the state he was elected to be governor, on an issue he has enthusiastic support for - you'd think he'd be paying attention to that, heck he could even know about that while he tours the country running for President.

I don't think my expectations are too high in thinking he should have known about what happened.

And those subcontractors are people I've had negative words for. In fact, they've completely convinced me that we should do away with payed signatures altogether.

Anonymous said...

This we agree on. It's just a shame that we're all so lazy when it comes to volunteering our time to one of the most important institutions in the nation we have to be paid for it. Shame on you America! haha

Ryan said...

lol.

Ya, paid signature gathering is one of the new things I can't stand. I'd even be in favor of lowering the necessary number of signatures to get things on the ballot, if we could ban paid-signature gathering.

But that's a different issue. I'm glad there are lots of things two people like you and I can get together and agree on.

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