Election Story the Media Missed: Pro-Family Truth Campaign Helped Sink Romney in Iowa
January 4, 2008
Peter LaBarbera, founder of the Republicans For Family Values website, issued the following statement on Mitt Romney’s stunning Iowa Caucuses defeat Thursday:
There is a story the media missed in its reporting of Mitt Romney’s humiliating loss in Iowa to the comparatively vastly under-funded Mike Huckabee: how a dogged “truth campaign†by pro-family advocates –– mostly from Romney’s own state of Massachusetts –– to educate social conservatives on his liberal record on abortion and homosexuality helped seal his defeat.
Much as Romney tried to run away from his pro-abortion and pro-gay past –– and as hard as Romney backers like Hugh Hewitt and Jay Sekulow worked to paper over it and discredit his socially conservative critics –– the truth got out, cracking Romney’s carefully-built facade.
While conservatives leaders tore into Mike Huckabee’s record –– and appropriately knocked him for some past liberal policies –– there seemed to be a kid-gloves approach among most conservative media power-brokers toward Romney and his liberal social record.
Where were the Ann Coulter hit-pieces against the man who once promised that he could do more for Massachusetts homosexuals than Ted Kennedy?
Part of the silence stems from Romney’s (present) strong rhetoric against “gay marriage,†which obscures his past as a strongly pro-homosexual politician who supported “domestic partners†legislation in Massachusetts and failed to back the original state amendment that could have preserved marriage as between a man and a woman in Massachusetts.
