“Mitt Gets Worse” is a super PAC partnership between two progressive icons – American Bridge 21st Century and Courage Campaign — “that aims to educate voters about Mitt Romney’s extreme anti-LGBT agenda.”
Four leaders within the LGBT community are helping to launch Mitt Gets Worse with their personal testimonials in what they’re calling an “oral history project and rapid response campaign.”
Adam Bink, Director of Online Programs at Courage Campaign joins Kathleen Henry, who was the chair of the Governor Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth — until he rescinded the executive order that created the commission. Also premiering on the Mitt Gets Worse website are Julie Goodridge, a lead plaintiff in Goodridge v. Dept of Public Health — the lawsuit that brought same-sex marriage to Massachusetts, and Jennifer Chrisler, Executive Director of the Family Equality Council.
Notes they will be publishing more first “person accounts of LGBT activists and organizers who have played key roles in this fight,” the Mitt Gets Worse campaign states:
Year after year, Mitt has moved further and further toward the extreme right. The Mitt Gets Worse campaign is an oral history of Mitt Romney’s efforts to diminish the rights and the freedoms of LGBT Americans, told by supporters, activists, and LGBT advocates that have personally been impacted by Mitt’s anti-equality agenda.
Mitt Gets Worse has been covered in major news publications like U.S. News and World Report, The Boston Globe, and Politico, along with dozens of others.
“Year after year, Mitt has moved further and further toward the extreme right,” notes Rick Jacobs, Chair of the Courage Campaign, in a Huffington Post op-ed, adding that “Romney has earned a well-deserved reputation as a flip-flopper — changing his positions in whatever direction advances his career.”
“Recently, while speaking to the NAACP convention in Texas, Mitt said he would represent ‘all Americans of every race, creed and sexual orientation.’ That may have been true in 1994 but clearly it is not true today,” Jacobs writes, adding:
Mitt’s extreme positions are even out of touch with his own party. I read with great interest this week a piece in the Los Angeles Times, written by the right-leaning CATO institute, that stated, “To be sure, anti-gay sentiments still run deep in the GOP. Yet if one digs deeper than the conventional wisdom, one finds large, overlooked pockets of gay tolerance among rank-and-file Republicans.” The piece goes on to site polling data from May 2011 showing a majority of Republicans — 51 percent — in favor of either same-sex marriage or civil unions. Other polling has shown a similar result — a majority of Republicans favor legal recognition of gay couples.
The piece concludes with a sentiment that has been shared by many keen political observers within the Republican Party – most prominently former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman — that Mitt Romney and his fellow Republicans would be smart to heed the shifting demographics on this issue.
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Unfortunately for millions of LGBT people in this country, we know the Mitt we’ll get. He’s the Mitt that is moving in the wrong direction (as our Facebook Timeline shows) away from history, not towards it. For millions like us, Mitt Gets Worse. And if elected, the country will get worse.
Many believe Romney secretly supports LGBT civil rights — just as many believed George W. Bush did before, and during, his campaign and subsequent eight years in the White House. Regardless of what we think our elected leaders believe, it’s clear that the Republican party has become ruled by far right wing radicals and religious zealots.
Romney’s recent failure to stand up to them when he had his first chance — during the six days Richard Grenell was the national security spokesperson for Mitt Romney’s campaign, until the infamous Bryan Fischer forced Romney to fire him, or let him resign (whichever you want to believe.)
Romney has proven time and time again that he will not stan up to special interests, and will say and do anything to get elected. Why would he be any different on LGBT civil rights — when he’s repeatedly sold us down the river?
Visit the Mitt Gets Worse campaign to watch the rest of the videos, and please consider making a donation.
Disclosure: Mitt Gets Worse has purchased advertising which has appeared on this site. Adam Bink of the Courage Campaign is a colleague and friend. I have made a personal contribution to the Mitt Gets Worse Campaign. The New Civil Rights Movement was not compensated for publishing this article.