"not a sparrow falls to the ground in the drafting of a national party platform that is not approved by the nominee and his or her staff"
by digby
So, it's just ridiculous, is it, to believe that because the Republican platform has been extreme in the past that Mitt Romney could have influenced it this time? Ed Kilgore points out what should be obvious to anyone:
As someone involved in Democratic conventions (including on two occasions the platform process) for a long time, I can confidently assert that it is a fact, of which the entire CNN staff appears ignorant, that not a sparrow falls to the ground in the drafting of a national party platform that is not approved by the nominee and his or her staff. That Team Mitt did not choose to publicly challenge the traditional “constitutional ban with no exceptions other than life of the mother” language does not absolve it of responsibility for it. Romney’s extraordinary “flexibility,” shall we say, on the abortion issue over the years is hardly news, but the basic point that Romney is indeed complicit in an extremist platform if he doesn’t bother to explicitly distance himself from it is sound, even if Anderson Cooper doesn’t “get it.”
It should not be news that the Romney campaign wants to have it both ways so they are allowing the wingnuts to have their day with the platform while they say they don't agree with it. But apparently it is. If Romney didn't want that platform to say what it says, it wouldn't say what it says.
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