Romney on '94 Debate With Kennedy

Among today's blogospherical buzz was the video that emerged from Mitt Romney's 1994 debate with Teddy Kennedy.  The video is delightful insofar as it's a chance to see someone actually undertaking the laudable effort to oust Kennedy from his seat.

But the buzz concerned the substance of the snippet, which concerned (among other things) abortion.  13 years ago, Romney was nominally pro-choice, in that he disagreed morally with abortion, but that he respected Roe v. Wade as the decades-old established law of the land and supported maintaining it.

Romney has since become decidedly pro-life, with the modest caveat that he favors states' rights over federal (and certainly over judicial) authority.

I am pro-life. I believe that abortion is the wrong choice except in cases of incest, rape, and to save the life of the mother. I wish the people of America agreed, and that the laws of our nation could reflect that view. But while the nation remains so divided over abortion, I believe that the states, through the democratic process, should determine their own abortion laws and not have them dictated by judicial mandate.

If we dismissed every reasoned and deliberate rightward shift of Presidential candidates on the abortion issue, the Gipper never could've won.  There's an uncanny symmetry to the fact that 13 years also separated Reagan signing into law California's liberal abortion rights bill and publishing the pro-life tome Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation.

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds (and Instawife Helen) interviewed Governor Romney on "The Glenn and Helen" radio show today and gave him an opportunity to comment on the debate video and his evolving abortion stance.  A YouTubed clip of the relevant segment of that interview is available below.

As Romney notes, the fact that his detractors are already reaching back more than a decade for ammunition says something about the strength of his platform.  Perhaps more notable is the lightning fast ability of Team Romney to respond to new media pugnacity with equivalent means.