By Gregory W. Wallace (@gregorywallace)
HOPKINTON, N.H., Oct. 10 — His last town hall-style meeting of the day featured the usual variety of questions — Social Security, the economy, and energy policy — but an unsuspecting Mitt Romney also faced traps set by the youngest audience members.
There was the 8 year old who asked about abortion, and another young voice who asked, "What steps will you take to save the economy?" And after a moment — perhaps spent in conference with parents and political advisors — Romney amplified the child's correction: "Okay, the environment."
Though he has tailored child-friendly answers to questions from kids at past town hall meetings — like his last in Manchester, when he jokingly warned a young girl to steer clear of a political career — today's questions were not the product of young minds, and Romney aimed his answers at the adults in the room.
Between questions from those too young to even vote in student council elections, Romney was badgered by repeated questioning from college students and young adults, some of whom came by bus from a Vermont Catholic college, Saint Michael's.
They repeatedly asked the former governor of Massachusetts about his positions on funding for AIDS treatments and marriage for gays and lesbians. The interrogation caused Romney to warn one young man that his question would not be answered if it were a repeat, and the abrasive questioning may have contributed to the relatively short length of this open event; Instead of lasting between 50 minutes and an hour, typical for Romney here, he ended around the 43-minute mark.
After an eight-minute stump speech, Romney opened the floor. "Now you get to ask the questions that you'd like to ask, and I'm gonna go around the room here and see," he said. When the first questioner took the microphone in one question and lifted a page with notes by the other, Romney said, "you're going to read it. That means it's a scary question."
"Will you commit to putting 6 million people by 2013 on life-saving medication in an effort to contain the worldwide AIDS epidemic?" the young lady asked.
"I will commit to look at that issue," Romney said, "but I'm not going to tell you exactly how we're going to spend money at the federal level budget by budget item."
He outlined his plan to balance the federal budget, which includes cutting discretionary spending to 2008 levels, repeal of President Barack Obama's health care reform, delegation of Medicaid to state governments, and other reforms outlined in his economic plan, released last month.
"And those other things we do, the humanitarian efforts we carry out around the world, and foreign aid and so forth, I'm going to look at them one by one to make sure they work for America and we can afford them," he said, mindful that spending means deeping the national debt.
But it was not the last he heard of the issue.
A few questions later, an audience member took the microphone to say that while he is sympathetic towards a fiscally conservative agenda, funding AIDS treatment worldwide ought to be a priority.
"Something I'm concerned with in terms of looking for candidates is looking for the candidate who is going to extend the sense of values that we hold throughout the world," the young man asked. "And I would like to know if a Romney administration would be committed to continuing to keep that budget at at least point five of one percent of the national budget and if we can get people around the world, six million people on antiretroviral drugs and working on continuing the tradition that was laid by the Bush administration in terms of funding."
Romney did not share any views on PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief as created under the administration of former President George W. Bush, but echoed the theme from his first response: he would be mindful of the issue while considering federal budgets and ballooning national debt.
"The answer is I'm not going to commit to a funding level at that level because I have not evaluated it in the context of the entire budget," he said. "I'm very reluctant to borrow more money, even to do wonderful things, if those wonderful things could be made by people making charitable contributions or by China. How many trillions of dollars does it take for China to say look we're going to step up and fund this."
But if the candidate thought he was putting the issue to bed, however, it would live yet another moment.
Romney worked his way around the audience, and found a young person with a marriage question. "Why do you feel the marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman is lesser than a marriage between a man and a woman?" he was asked.
"I think the ideal setting to raise a child for a society like ours is between a man and a woman, a marriage," Romney answered. "And so our society should encourage a marriage between a man and a woman."
Ten minutes later, a different young lady received the microphone: "I have a follow up to the gay marriage question asked earlier. I was raised by my mother and my grandmother, and you said that the preferred setting is for a man and a woman. I was wondering how that would be different when I was raised by two women but they weren't married, they weren't gay, they were related."
His response: "I can say look, there are a lot of folks that are raised by one parent, through divorce or death or one parent having a child out of wedlock. But our society realizes that the ideal setting for raising a child is when you have two people who are working together, and one is male, and one is female. I happen to believe that and I think that is one reason why we say as a society that you know what, we're going to call marriage what it has been called for six thousand years, or longer: a relationship between one man and one woman."
But she was not satisfied. "And just a follow up: if you don't support marriage, what about civil unions?" she asked. "What I would support is that people of the same gender having partnership, if you will, agreements if they wanted a partnership with someone else and to have such things as hospital visitation rights and similar rights of that nature," Romney replied, before turning to his right to find the next question.
It was another follow-up.
"I have a follow up to the earlier question about HIV/AIDS medication," a young lady started. "You're not going to hear any more from me on that," Romney said. "You said that you are willing to preserve point five percent of..." she started, referring to funding statistics presented earlier. "No, I did not," Romney said, and several in the audience came to his support.
She passed the microphone to a young lady next to her, who said, "There's this thing, the financial transaction tax," she said, and "you do not want to raise taxes. We're in New Hampshire, we don't like high taxes. We know that well."
"Yes, exactly," Romney replied as she continued: "But the financial transaction tax is a very small tax on international proceeds so its going to go to the banks and the corporations that don't affect us middle class. A very small tax that could actually pay to put every single person that has HIV in the world on antiretroviral treatment," she said to applause, seemingly from her peers. "We could cure AIDS. . . .
"That's a solution, and we would really appreciate if you looked in to that and some other commitments to cover health and foreign aid."
Romney moved on without comment, and managed to find a few softer questions, including one from an undecided young man from North Carolina, who asked the former governor of Massachusetts whether his private sector experience is better than businessman Herman Cain, who is known for leading Godfather's Pizza, but has no government experience. Cain previously ran an unsuccessful bid to represent Georgia in the Senate.
"Herman Cain is a terrific guy," Romney said, "and give him a good look. I'm not going to try to convince you that my private sector experience is better than his."
But then Romney made an unusual dig at his rival.
“I took private sector experience and applied it in government, and that worked, and I was able to find ways to use my skills to get ahead in the public sector setting, " he said. And that’s probably something that if I were Herman, I'd say I wish I had that too, because you don't want to necessarily learn that for the first time as the President of the United States."
Romney’s lengthy answer to the question included a sneaky jab at Obama ("By the way, in my party, we celebrate success. We don't tax success, we celebrate it.") and then he made nice with his Republican competitor.
"Vote for either one of us and you'll be happy."
One audience member handed Romney a Red Sox baseball cap, and, assuming he would be elected, suggested that Romney bring it to Washington, D.C. with him. The candidate admired the cap, lamented on the Sox' narrowly missing a playoff spot, and said his interest had turned to the New England Patriots football team of late.
Quick on his feet, the man who brought the baseball cap threw a quip on the Sox and a jab at Obama: "That's the perfect example that you can't throw money at a problem," he said, to hearty laughter and applause.
