Boston – To hear Mitt Romney talk on the campaign trail, you might think the Republican presidential candidate had a gun rack in the back of his pickup truck.
“I purchased a gun when I was a young man. I’ve been a hunter pretty much all my life,” he said this week in Keene, N.H., to a man sporting a National Rifle Association cap.
Yet the former Massachusetts governor’s hunting experience is limited to two trips at the bookends of his 60 years: as a child, when he hunted rabbits with his cousins on a ranch in Idaho, and last year, when he shot quail on a fenced game preserve in Georgia while on an outing with major donors to the Republican Governors Association, which Romney headed at the time.
An aide said Wednesday that Romney was not trying to mislead anyone, although he confirmed Romney had been hunting only on those occasions.
“Gov. Romney’s support for the Second Amendment doesn’t come from the fact he knows how to handle a firearm; it comes from his appreciation of the Constitution and the rights enshrined in it, including the right to keep and bear arms,” said spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom.
Expressing familiarity with and support for gun rights is key among Republican presidential contenders, who count gun owners, members of the military and the NRA itself among their potential supporters.
Additional political news briefs:
WASHINGTON
Giuliani backs funds for some abortions
Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani has reaffirmed his support for public funding for some abortions.
“Ultimately, it’s a constitutional right, and therefore if it’s a constitutional right, ultimately, even if you do it on a state-by- state basis, you have to make sure people are protected,” Giuliani said in an interview with CNN while campaigning Wednesday in Tallahassee, Fla.
Giuliani held the same view when he ran for New York mayor in 1989, when he said, “There must be public funding for abortion for poor women.”
Giuliani’s support of abortion rights is at odds with many conservative Republicans, whose backing he hopes to gain for the presidential primaries next year.
MADISON, Wis.
Gingrich says lengthy campaigns destructive
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says presidential candidates are foolish to raise millions of dollars so far ahead of the November 2008 election.
“The idea that people are going to spend an entire year campaigning in order to spend an entire year campaigning just strikes me as destructive,” Gingrich told reporters Wednesday before delivering a speech at a business convention.
Gingrich said he wouldn’t decide whether to enter the race for the Republican nomination until at least late September.
