Q & A

WhyRomney is a grassroots effort. Answers we provide are for educational purposes and are not endorsed by Mitt Romney or any campaign. To submit your question to the Q&A, use the contact form below and specify that your question is for the public Q&A. Questions may be edited and paraphrased for content and length.

Questions

• Does Mitt Romney believe in global warming?
• Did Romney have any scandals as governor of Massachusetts?
• With all the problems relating to the Big Dig, why did Romney grant Bechtel/Parsons Brinkerhoff a contract extension, and why did Romney not hold anyone accountable when a concrete ceiling panel in an interstate connector tunnel fell and killed a woman?
• How can Romney favor rights for gay people and claim to be a Christian?
• When Romney closed business tax loopholes, did it not have the same effect as raising taxes? And don't customers end up paying for that in the form of higher prices?
• Visiting state parks used to be free, so why did Romney institute a parking fee?
• Does Romney want to limit the right to bear arms?
• In Massachusetts they used to have lifetime registration on their vehicles, so why did Romney change it to every two years?
• If Romney was only trying to update fees to cover the cost of the service, why did he raise the fee for purchasing a gun permit from $25 to $100?
• Is it true Romney raised a gasoline tax in Massachusetts?
• Didn't Romney purchase his lifetime NRA membership suspiciously close to the 2008 campaign?
• Is it true Mitt Romney put his dog in a kennel on top of his vehicle during a road trip?
• What about people who say Mitt Romney is not conservative?

• Does Mitt Romney believe in global warming?
  • Romney does not dispute temperature readings which show a warming trend, however Romney does not blame this all on man and does not believe drastic measures are necessary or practical. Mitt Romney rejects "cap and trade" and all other actions which would hurt the economy. Instead, he favors other solutions such as expanding use of natural gas and nuclear power.
    
    Romney does acknowledge that man is responsible for "some" warming, but is quick to state that we don't know how much. Romney's position is entirely accurate. Even if we set aside the question of greenhouse gases, the mere act of burning fossil fuels generates heat which otherwise would not be released. This is a relatively tiny amount of heat, but enough to have "some" effect. Similarly, man's corresponding carbon emissions have "some" effect on warming, through the greenhouse effect. No one disputes that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas - not Glenn Beck, not Rush Limbaugh, not Mitt Romney. The dispute over global warming is not about whether man contributes to warming, but whether the amplification effect of that warming surpasses the earth's moderating forces. For instance, the warming caused by man's carbon emissions enables the atmosphere to hold slightly more water. Since water also acts as a greenhouse gas, this in turn creates slightly more warming which then allows even more water to be held in the atmosphere, which creates more warming and more water, in a repeating cycle. This is the amplifying effect which global warming enthusiasts, from Al Gore to Al Franken, believe is getting out of control. But climate is extremely complex and has many moderating factors which we don't even understand.
    
    No one knows how much the earth will moderate the amplification cycle. And that goes both ways. The climate scientists don't know, the global warming enthusiasts don't know, and the climate change skeptics don't know. So, how can anyone criticize Mitt Romney's observation that man is contributing "some" to global warming?
    
    Until Romney's critics can answer "how much?" they have no grounds for criticizing him.
    
    
• Did Romney have any scandals as governor of Massachusetts?
  • No, Romney has never been involved in any scandals in either his public or private life.
• With all the problems relating to the Big Dig, why did Romney grant Bechtel/Parsons Brinkerhoff a contract extension, and why did Romney not hold anyone accountable when a concrete ceiling panel in an interstate connector tunnel fell and killed a woman?
  • The Big Dig started more than 10 years before Romney took office. The small extension to help finish the project was given because the logistical costs of replacing Bechtel/Parsons Brinkerhoff with a new engineering firm at that stage would have been enormous. The contract extension was for only $8 million, while the entire Big Dig roadway reconstruction project was almost $15 billion, which is almost 2,000 times the amount of the contract extension.
    
    Concerning accountability, in March of 2004 Romney's administration sued Bechtel/Parsons Brinkerhoff for $146 million (which is 18 times the amount of the contract extension). Also, Romney repeatedly called on Massachusetts Turnpike Authority CEO Matthew Amorello to step down, ultimately forcing his resignation. With regards to the terrible incident in the interstate connector tunnel, assigning specific blame was impossible, and it would have been irresponsible of Romney to create a scapegoat. However, where blame was identified Romney held people to account. For instance, two months prior to the incident, six Aggregate Industries managers were indicted for a conspiracy to deliver tainted concrete over nine years, totalling over 1% of the concrete used in the Big Dig during that period.
• How can Romney favor rights for gay people and claim to be a Christian?
  • Mitt Romney opposes both gay marriage and civil unions. While his faith does not dictate his policy decisions, the laws of God according to the Bible command him to love everyone, which includes gay people.
    
    The Bible does not specify how secular law should relate to gay people, and therefore Romney has no religious reason to contradict the Biblical law to "do unto others as thou wouldst have them do unto you." As a matter of public policy, Mitt believes the government should treat homosexuals the same as anyone else. As this relates to the definition of family, Mitt believes that no one should have a right to redefine family, and holds all citizens to this standard equally.
    
    Romney understands the right of children to live in the natural order of family, and that it is indeed a natural order which man did not choose but is bound by. Adults do not have a right to control and rule the lives of children by virtue of simply being older than they are. That natural right comes from the biological creation of the child. If this were not so, at the moment of birth a child would have no legal connection to the woman who gave him or her life, and since she would have no special claim on the child, a "mother" or "father," would be appointed by the government from a pool of interested adults, with childless adults having first claim, under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. This may sound absurd, but denying the biological basis of parental rights puts us in exactly that position.
    
    In situations where the natural order of family is not available to a child, society collectively determines an alternate arrangement for the child, with the best interest of the child as the only consideration at stake. The first preferred alternative is for the child to be adopted into a natural family which already exists, preferably part of their own extended family. Historically, when this option has not been available, society has instituted orphanages and other sub-optimal situations for providing basic needs. But society always recognized that the adults who ran the orphanages did not have a "right" to have children provided to them to occupy their orphanage, and did not have a "right" to redefine the orphanage as a family.
    
    People can disagree on the significance of natural order. For instance, they can disagree on the significance of differences between day and night, and on the significance of laws which treat day and night differently despite the fact that we can artificially light our streets and theoretically conduct most of our affairs as though there is no fundamental distinction. Or, we could eliminate wildlife preserves and function as though there is no such thing as natural landscape. But many people believe in the significance of nature, and it is not possible to deny that natural order has a pattern of male/female pairing as the basis for family.
    
    This position should not be offensive, as it is based on reason. If children are born with a preference for the gender of their mates, then the proposition that children are also born with a preference for the natural gender of their parents is not an insult but a consistent application of principle. We can't say in the first type of "family" relationship that genders are not interchangeable but that in the second type of "family" relationship genders are interchangeable.
• When Romney closed business tax loopholes, did it not have the same effect as raising taxes? And don't customers end up paying for that in the form of higher prices?
  • No, level competition ensures maximum value for the consumer. The law as originally written did not intend for the tax "breaks" in question to be legal. They were oversights. So closing the loopholes does not have the effect of raising taxes but has the effect of applying tax rates evenly, which is a fundamental principle of capitalism. If one business is paying less in taxes because of a loophole, the state is giving them an unfair advantage over their competitors. Because of this unfair advantage they do not need to offer as high of a quality of product or service in order to compete, which means the state is interfering in free market competition, and capitalism suffers.
    
    Romney repeatedly proposed tax cuts in MA, but the legislature wouldn't go along with it. Lower tax rates are good, but applying tax rates evenly - without loopholes - is also good.
• Visiting state parks used to be free, so why did Romney institute a parking fee?
  • It wasn't free. The taxpayer was paying for the parking space. One parking space costs over 20,000 dollars, not including upkeep, re-pavement, snow removal, security etc. Facing a budget crisis, Romney realized the state could no longer subsidize public leisure. To provide the service, the cost shifted from the taxpayer to the individual who chooses to use the service.
• Does Romney want to limit the right to bear arms?
  • Mitt Romney supports the constitutional right to bear arms as intended by the founding fathers. The founding fathers did not intend a right to bear nuclear arms, for example, so we need to thoughtfully draw the line according to their intent. Mitt believes banning weapons of extreme lethality, which are not practical for self-defense, is consistent with the original intent of the second amendment. Critics of Mitt Romney fail to explain where they would draw the line and what principles ostensibly make their own line conservative.
• In Massachusetts they used to have lifetime registration on their vehicles, so why did Romney change it to every two years?
  • Illegal immigration, identify theft, car theft and uninsured drivers weren't as problematic in the past as they are today. And people move. The purpose of registration is to preserve law and order. When a vehicle is on the road and does not have a current registration, it's a red flag for law enforcement. Using a vehicle on public roads is a privilege.
• If Romney was only trying to update fees to cover the cost of the service, why did he raise the fee for purchasing a gun permit from $25 to $100?
  • First, when Romney did his update it only raised the fee to $75. The legislature later brought it to $100, which Romney compensated for by ordering that people not be charged for replacing of lost or stolen permits - prior to that, people had to pay the fee again. Romney also signed a law allowing permits to expire after 6 years instead of 3.
    
    Inflation was also relevant, but unlike most of the fees Romney updated, inflation was only a secondary factor for these increased state costs. The MA gun control act of 1998 declared that the licensing authority is only allowed to keep half of the fee, and the rest goes into a new record-keeping fund. The act also institutes a number of other changes which raise overhead and impacted costs. The people are ultimately responsible for this new fund and all the new regulations and overhead, since they elected their representatives. Thus, the people collectively chose the cost of providing the service.
• Is it true Romney raised a gasoline tax in Massachusetts?
  • No, Romney updated an already existing per-gallon gasoline fee to offset state costs in managing underground fuel storage leaks. At the time, Romney faced a backlog of cleanup claims for the underfunded state program. It is true that in the years since this increase, the fee has generated more revenue than Romney had anticipated. The initial costs, caused by the backlog of claims, were not representative of future costs, due to improved storage tank quality. So that was a mistake, however I think the important thing is that Romney did not spend the surplus but tried to return it to the people. Romney turned a 3 Billion dollar budget deficit crisis into a surplus. He put the surplus in a rainy day fund and tried to give back to the taxpayers most of the 240 million which he estimated had been raised by fees, starting as soon as he began to turn around the economy, prompting the liberal Boston Globe to complain after Romney’s first year in office, “The first signs of life appear in the Massachusetts economy and the governor calls for a $225 million tax cut” (“Romney’s Real Agenda,” The Boston Globe 11 May 2004).
• Didn't Romney purchase his lifetime NRA membership suspiciously close to the 2008 campaign?
  • It was a political statement and Romney never presented it as anything other than that. Romney's antagonists have falsely implied that Romney used his membership to mislead, which is not the case.
• Is it true Mitt Romney put his dog in a kennel on top of his vehicle during a road trip?
  • Yes, and from a physics standpoint, as opposed to a political "gotcha" standpoint, it was less invasive and safer than riding on a double-decker bus. The center of mass for Romney's vehicle was virtually unaffected by the kennel, and therefore driving maneuvers had virtually the same effect on the dog as if he was inside the vehicle. We trust Romney was driving the speed limit. The dog, Seamus, apparently enjoyed riding in the secured kennel. As Ann Romney explained, "Our dog Seamus rode in an ENCLOSED kennel, not in the open air. And he loved it. Every time he saw it, he jumped up on the tailgate, walked in, and lay down. It was just like the kennel he curled up in at home."
    
    This would be no different than securing the kennel in the back of a truck. Massachusetts state law requires that an animal riding in the "load bearing" part of the vehicle be secured within a kennel. Romney had a full car of kids and no room for the dog, so following the law, he built a kennel with a windshield and secured it to the top of the car, instead of leaving the dog home by himself.
• What about people who say Mitt Romney is not conservative?
  • That question might not have an objective answer, but here are the thoughts of this writer. Some people rely on others to decide what is or is not a "conservative" position, without understanding for themselves the underlying principles of conservatism. In the debate over how to apply conservative principles, it is not productive to accuse people who claim to be conservative of not being conservative, because as thinking conservatives we never say "the debate is over" like Al Gore did. We are always open to new information which may help us refine our views.Those who fail to understand this create unnecessary gridlock within the conservative movement. Positions are not just conservative because they are conservative. That would be a tautology. In truth, positions are conservative because they adhere to conservative principles AFTER all available analysis.
    
    For instance, some have accused this writer of not being conservative because I oppose school vouchers - without even caring to know why I oppose them. The reason I oppose them is because anything the government gives it can also take away. If private schools become dependent on government vouchers (through students who use vouchers), then private schools would be brought to their knees the instant the government decides to pull away the vouchers. Simply by threatening to pull away the vouchers the government would have a great deal of leverage over the people. I believe my view is aligned with conservative principles, but I'm open to hearing arguments which may sway my view. Similarly, I think of Romney as a true conservative precisely because he seeks out new information and arguments. Those who accuse him of not being conservative either don't understand the information behind his positions (much of which is on this website) or have new information which they are holding back for inexplicable reasons.