Mitt Romney made “overtures” to Ken Mehlman, the gay, former chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), to lead his 2012 presidential campaign, a widely-read article published Sunday evening in Politico states. Mehlman, who was the architect of former President George W. Bush‘s 2004 re-eection campaign, which included a focus on driving voters to the polls by focusing on anti-gay marriage legislation, came out as gay in 2010.0
The Politico article, “Inside the campaign: How Mitt Romney stumbled,” states:
POLITICO has learned when Romney was gearing up for his 2012 run, he made never-before-reported overtures to Ken Mehlman, the manager of Bush’s campaign, and Mike Murphy, a top strategist who remains close to Romney.
Mitt Romney hired Richard Grenell as his national security spokesperson earlier this year. Grenell, who is gay, lasted less than a week, after Bryan Fischer and other anti-gay conservative activists, forced him to resign. Romney, reportedly, did little to nothing to keep him. In a May look at the event, a Bloomberg op-ed title says it all: “Mitt Romney’s Bigotry Needs No Spokesman.”
Meanwhile, the Politico article, which focuses on Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s top strategist, points to Stevens — and Romney — as the reason Romney is stumbling.
Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s top strategist, knew his candidate’s convention speech needed a memorable mix of loft and grace if he was going to bound out of Tampa with an authentic chance to win the presidency. So Stevens, bypassing the speechwriting staff at the campaign’s Boston headquarters, assigned the sensitive task of drafting it to Peter Wehner, a veteran of the last three Republican White Houses and one of the party’s smarter wordsmiths.
Not a word Wehner wrote was ever spoken.
Stevens junked the entire thing, setting off a chaotic, eight-day scramble that would produce an hour of prime-time problems for Romney, including Clint Eastwood’s meandering monologue to an empty chair.
In perhaps his worst, most offensive anti-gay act, Romney on Friday, in a pre-recorded video address to the Values Voters Summit, thanked Values Voters Summit hosts Family Research Council and its president, Tony Perkins, “for their leadership.” The Family Research Council is a certified anti-gay hate group.
Romney, as a lengthy profile published in the Boston Globe last week reported, told a group of gay parents in 2004, who were pleading with him to enact a Massachusetts supreme court order mandating same-sex couples be allowed to marry. After spending 20 minutes hearing them explain why marriage was critical for them and their families, Romney replied, “I didn’t know you had families.”
Mehlman, for his part, apologized for his role in anti-gay Republican politics, and has worked to further same-sex marriage, reportedly contributing to the success of marriage in New York.