Romney on the Social Issues

Mitt Romney has come under attack in some quarters for his positions on the social issues when he ran for the Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994. Apparently there is a YouTube video floating around, that shows a portion of a 1994 debate with Kennedy. Earlier today, Romney was interviewed on the Glenn and Helen show, and Helen Smith asked about this 1994 video. Romney’s campaign has created and posted its own YouTube video of Romney responding to Helen’s question, and addressing his record on the social issues. As usual with Romney, he is very good:

For me, the preeminent issues relate to national security, and economic issues are second. Federalism and judicial issues are third, and the social issues are a distant fourth. So nothing about this is a deal-maker or deal-breaker for me. To the extent that I am interested in Romney as a candidate–and I am–I’m mostly happy to see him handling them skillfully. And I was also glad to see the anti-discrimination pitch that he put in at the end.
Glenn Reynolds doesn’t seem to have posted the podcast of his and Helen’s interview with Romney yet, but we’ll link to it when it’s up. No doubt it will be up to their usual high standards; it’s funny how rare it is to hear anything in the mainstream media as civil or as intelligent as Glenn and Helen’s interviews.
UPDATE: The podcast is now up..
PAUL adds: Romney seems like an interesting mixture. On one hand, he’s a leader in a church that can be viewed as expecting its followers to accept even more on faith than most other religions. On the other hand, he made his mark as the consummate business consultant. A cynic might say that business consultants expect their clients to take much on faith too, but the profession nonetheless is the embodiment of hard-headed, rational, and pragmatic thinking.
When you mix the two, you might not get a dyed-in-the-wool, all-out committed social conservative. But you might well get someone at least as socially conservative as John McCain and more socially conservative than Rudy Giuliani. I think that’s the case with Romney.
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