60 days, 60 stats - #1

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It's roughly 60 days until the US Presidential election.  As an exercise in my continuing mission of voter education, I've decided to challenge myself to produce 60 relevant, objective, substantive statistics that will help people compare Romney & Obama.

Today's statistic is 5 - the number of key campaign issues on which Mitt Romney flip-flopped.  Abortion, gun control, climate change, health insurance, and taxes.  Personally, I don't think abortion or gun control matter, but I recognize that many Americans do, and Mitt has made them major elements of his platform.  From The Economist:


"When Mitt Romney was governor of liberal Massachusetts, he supported abortion, gun control, tackling climate change and a requirement that everyone should buy health insurance, backed up with generous subsidies for those who could not afford it. Now, ... he opposes all those things. A year ago he favoured keeping income taxes at their current levels; now he wants to slash them for everybody, with the rate falling from 35% to 28% for the richest Americans." 

Some feel he's actually flip flopped on more topics than this, but I think we can all agree these are 5 topics that often play a key role in US elections, for better or worse.  I think it's relevant that he's flop flopped so often because it shows a concrete pattern - the man adjusts his views to whatever he thinks will get him elected, even when it conflicts with his own conscience (abortion & health care for the poor).  That's unsettling. 

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