Today, primary-rival Newt Gingrich’s super PAC, Winning Our Future, launched a video that fits, like attack-campaign yin and yang, with a video launched by the Democratic National Committee in November.

“Think you know Mitt. He claims to be pro-life,” says the ad narrator. The comes footage of Romney when he was running for governor of Massachusetts in which he unabashedly supports abortion rights and the right of minors seeking abortions to win consent from judges rather than their parents.

The DNC ad is similarly foreboding, complete with dark music and blood-red text underliner.

The inevitable left and right attacks on Romney’s stands on abortion actually serve to dampen the urgency to know where he stands on the issue because they underscore the larger, main issue of the Romney candidacy, which is the fact that no one can be sure what Romney thinks from one moment to the next about major policy issues, including one of the most charged political issues of the contemporary American life.

Romney mostly avoided campaigning in Iowa caucuses in the fall because the predominant evangelical Christian Republican voters there make social issues a top priority.

South Carolina primary voters are similarly concerned with issues like gay marriage and abortion but the state has become a key southern peg in the GOP nomination contest, too important to coast through. A multimillionaire former private equity CEO, Romney’s strategy so far has been to veer to discussion about the economy, or more accurately, to discussion of President Obama’s “socialism” and “politics of class envy.”

Romney decided to avoid altogether a voter Q&A forum hosted today in South Carolina by Colorado-based Personhood USA. Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich are all slated to attend.

The forum questions Romney would have faced were sure to be loaded.

Romney has refused to sign a pledge sponsored by Personhood USA and, according to the group, is “the only Republican Presidential Candidate who is not participating in the Presidential Prolife Forum, and the only candidate who has not signed Personhood USA’s Prolife Presidential Pledge.”

Romney told Mike Huckabee on Fox News in November that he “absolutely” would “support the constitutional amendment that would have established the definition of life at conception.” Huckabee was talking unequivocaly about personhood. It is that exchange that fueled the November DNC attacks.

Romney drew fire last year for refusing to sign an anti-abortion pledge sponsored by the Susan B. Anthony List, a Washington-based advocacy group. He said the pledge was “overly broad” and published his own version on his website. He espoused support for the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for abortion, and promised that, as president, he would “support efforts to prohibit federal funding for any organization like Planned Parenthood.”

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Late last week, national Democrats announced they would be launching a campaign responding to laws across the country that may decrease access to the polls for many for the 2012 election.

U.S. News reports:

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz accused Republicans of launching a “full-scale attack on the public’s right to vote.” She said that GOP efforts in states to curb instant voter registration and early voting and require photo identification at the polls to fight alleged fraud could push minorities, especially Hispanics and African-Americans, away from voting. She claimed that repeated investigations into voter fraud have found very little evidence that it occurs.

…

The Republican National Committee rejected the charges, however. Officials said there is evidence of voter fraud. In just one popularized case, for example, they note that ACORN—the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now—in 2008 was accused of handling 400,000 fraudulent registrations.

The website, protectingthevote.com, states that “in 2011, a new movement to change the way we vote is under way. Unlike past reforms that sought to expand access to voting, this effort aims to restrict voting purely for partisan gain.”

The website runs through some of the most restrictive new laws in states across the country. The DNC points to laws that “target voter registration drives, cut early voting, repeal election day registration, and create citizen challenges” as the biggest culprits of voter suppression.

The website also has a link to a 73-page report written by the Voting Rights Institute, with help from the DNC. The report singled out Florida as passing some of the most restrictive voting laws, including one law that targets voter-registration drives and another that cuts early voting.

According to the report:

The GOP enacted restrictions on voter registration drives in Florida and Texas, and proposed similar measures in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, and Mississippi. The new legislation in Florida was by far the GOP’s most extensive effort. In 2010, Republican Governor Rick Scott rode a wave of Tea Party support to victory in the state’s gubernatorial race, joining Republican majorities in the Florida House and Senate. A pinnacle of their collaboration in this year’s legislative session was HB1355, a 158-page omnibus elections overhaul that—in addition to early voting cuts—enacted draconian restrictions on all nongovernmental entities that conduct voter registration.

Under HB1355, any group or individual that conducts voter registration must now (1) register their organization with the Florida Division of Elections prior to conducting registration activities and regularly file onerous reports on all their activities; (2) track and account for voter registration forms using a specially generated number for each document; (3) submit completed voter registration forms to the state within 48 hours (a significant decrease from the previous deadline of 10 days); (4) subject themselves to fines between $50 and $1,000 for registration forms returned to the state after 48 hours; and (5) submit to new enforcement authority from the Florida attorney general.

These restrictions encumber even large and experienced organizations; immediately after HB1355 was passed, the League of Women Voters of Florida suspended its voter registration activities. But these restrictions fall heaviest on small organizations that conduct neighborhood voter registration, lack the capacity to abide by the state’s reporting requirements and tight deadlines, and could be virtually bankrupted under this penalty structure. Already, there are reports of public school teachers who may face huge fines under the new law—all for the supposed offense of helping students register to vote without following each minute requirement of the new law.

Fewer voter registration drives mean fewer voters. But cutting back on voter registration drives does not have the effect of limiting the political participation of all citizens equally. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau demonstrates that African American and Hispanic voters are more than twice as likely to register through voter registration drives as are white voters in Florida.

Democrats have also sought congressional investigations in order to address these laws. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.,requested congressional field hearings into the new laws, asking Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to schedule them. Nelson also sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder requesting that the Justice Department launch an investigation into whether the “new state voting laws resulted from collusion or an orchestrated effort to limit voter turnout.”

Florida is currently waiting for a ruling on the most controversial aspects of H.B. 1355 from a court in the District of Columbia.

Photo: Flickr/hjl

“I was extremely concerned when I saw that Romney embraced [proposed state-constitution personhood amendments]. It’s extreme legislation and it’s deceptive. It goes far beyond anti-choice,” DeGette told reporters on a conference call. She underlined the fact that personhood initiatives would outlaw birth control pills and would place in jeopardy millions in private and public money being invested in medical stem cell research.

Coloradans have roundly voted down personhood measures twice at the ballot box in recent elections, she said.

“I think voters in Colorado reject this. Families dealing with parkinsons and diabetes and alzheimers, they’re not in favor of passing edgy bills that endanger [the search for cures].”

Palacio said the fact that the GOP presidential frontrunner has now come out in support of personhood will rightly focus more attention on the groups pushing personhood and the kind of laws they seek every year to write into state constitutions.

“Personhood places the rights of rapists above the rights of their victims,” he said, referring to the fact that personhood initiatives would outlaw abortion in all cases. There would be no exceptions for rape or incest or if the life of the mother were in danger.

“Voters have to know how dangerous these [laws] are.”

Palacio pointed out that Colorado voters during the Republican wave election of 2010 rejected the U.S. Senate candidacy of Republican Ken Buck due in part, he said, to the fact that Buck embraced personhood and admitted he would support a complete ban on abortion in all cases.

Critics of the personhood measure proposed for Colorado in 2010 argued that it would shut down large parts of the thriving biomedical research industry here. Not just stem cell research but basic fertilization research and practices would suffer. In-vitro fertilization, for example, would be outlawed. Legal analysts said the laws would force the state constitution to be altered in hundreds of instances. Pregnant women who used drugs or drank too much or otherwise endangered the fertilized eggs they were carrying could be confined. Penalties for damaging or destroying fertilized eggs would have to be written and funds allocated to cover related difficult to enforce laws.

Asked about the legal consequences of the initiative, Keith Mason, co-founder of Personhood USA, said he would “worry about the [legal] details later,” after the bill had passed.

Yet Buck wasn’t the only Republican candidate last year to support personhood. Although in 2008 most Colorado Republican candidates rejected personhood as extreme, in 2010 nearly every major Republican candidate in the state embraced the proposed amendment. Fourth District Republican Cory Gardner told Tea Party supporters that he was passing out the personhood petition at his church. Gardner won a seat in Congress and has voted for a slew of sweeping anti-abortion bills passed by the GOP-controlled Congress this year.

Beyond Colorado, the national Democratic Party is pushing hard to highlight Romney’s support for personhood, betting the vast majority of voters will shy away from electing a president who will work both to outlaw birth control pills and risk resurrecting the blackmarket abortion industry.

Democratic National Committee launched a video campaign this week and Executive Director Patrick Gaspard sent a letter to supporters going hard at Romney on the issue.

“Personhood” amendments are the notorious measures now being considered in states like Mississippi, Florida, and Ohio, that would elevate a fertilized human egg to the status of a legal person. They would ban IUDs, the morning-after pill, in-vitro fertilization, and all abortions — with no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest or in cases where the life of a woman is at stake…

“If Romney wants to take the position that abortion and birth control are equal to murder, that’s up to him, but we’ll hold him accountable for it, and not let anyone forget that he’s made the choice to go this far to the right on this issue.”

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President Obama and the Democratic National Committee have begun courting female voters for the upcoming presidential election. Even though many women voters defected last year after voting in record numbers for the president in 2008, DNC chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Pembroke Pines, says the GOP’s current anti-reproductive rights stance will be a big help in recapturing those voters.

In 2008, women delivered big for the president. According to The Washington Times, they voted 56 percent to 43 percent over Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona. Women, in general, also turned out in record numbers. This bloc of voters represented a significant edge for Obama during the election.

Last year, though, women voted for Republican candidates over Democratic candidates 49 percent to 48 percent. The Times said it was “the first time in at least 30 years that Republican candidates received a majority of women’s votes.”

Wasserman Schultz told the Times that women defected for mostly economic reasons. However, she believes that recent anti-abortion rights legislation around the country and efforts to defund Planned Parenthood will be a big help in winning back this important bloc of voters.

“The voters have gotten a glimpse of what total Republican control would look like, an extreme social agenda that was nothing short of an assault on women, trying to redefine rape and deny women the opportunity to make their own reproductive choices,” Wasserman Schultz said, according to the Times. “Their record is a war on women and it’s a priority for them.”

So far this year, Florida’s GOP-led state Legislature and Republican governor passed five bills aimed at limiting abortion-rights, cut family planning aid by almost $1 million and also cut a whole host of women’s and children’s health services from the state budget. Recent polling also suggests that voters are mostly opposed to the current debate that surrounds reproductive health. Voters view the debate’s intense focus on abortion unfavorably.

In the state of Florida, the combination of austere budget cuts, a dwindling economy and a significant focus on issues such as abortion and immigration has led to a lead in the polls for Obama’s in the state so far. Republican Gov. Rick Scott is also feeling the bite. Recent polling shows that 57 percent of the state disapproves of the governor’s performance.

The group of evangelical, mainline Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim leaders took out a full-page ad in Roll Call to publish an open letter to Congress. The letter urges lawmakers to “reject vitriolic and rancorous rhetoric, consider the consequences of their words, and engage political adversaries in a spirit of the shared American values of civility and cooperation.”

This tragedy has spurred a sorely needed time of soul searching and national public dialogue about violent and vitriolic political rhetoric. We strongly support this reflection, as we are deeply troubled that rancor, threats and incivility have become commonplace in our public debates.

We appreciate the sacrifices you make and risks you incur by accepting a call to public service, and we urge you to continue to serve as stewards of our democracy by engaging ideological adversaries not as enemies, but as fellow Americans.

In our communities and congregations, we pledge to foster an environment conducive to the important and difficult debates so crucial to American democracy. In our churches, mosques and synagogues, we come together not as members of a certain political ideology or party, but as children of God and citizens called to build a more perfect union. We pray that you do the same.

Arizona’s Bishop Minerva Carcaño of Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church, Rev. Jan Olav Flaaten, Executive Director of the Arizona Ecumenical Council, and Rt. Rev. Kirk S. Smith, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, joined with the group in signing the letter. The full letter is available as a pdf here.

The letter does not attempt to tie the shootings to political rhetoric. The signatories are looking to seize an opportunity to make a necessary change.

Evangelical conservative Mark DeMoss made a similar push two years ago with his Civility Project. The project sent a pledge to nearly 600 lawmakers and governors asking them to agree to three basic tenets: (1)” I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior”; (2) “I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them”; and (3) “I will stand against incivility when I see it.”

DeMoss reported that in two years three lawmakers signed the pledge. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Reps. Frank Wolfe (R-Va.) and Sue Myrick (R-N.C.). DeMoss shut down the failed project days before the Tucson shootings.

At the end of March last year, as health-reform vitriol about socialists and traitors streamed across the airwaves and lawmaker offices were vandalized, the Democratic National Committee sent the Republican National Committee a “civility statement” to sign. RNC leaders saw the proposal as disingenuous maneuvering.

The statement called for “elected officials of both parties to set an example of the civility we want to see in our citizenry” and called on “all Americans to respect differences of opinion, to refrain from inappropriate forms of intimidation, to reject violence and vandalism, and to scale back rhetoric that might reasonably be misinterpreted by those prone to such behavior.”

The proposal went nowhere and party leaders blamed each other for incivility.

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GOP U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck dropped by former Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff’s birthday party campaign-debt fundraiser Thursday. Buck gave Romanoff a “Buck for Colorado” bumper sticker and he gave Romanoff’s fans a laugh and a thorn to twist in the side of Sen. Michael Bennet, who defeated Romanoff in a hard fought and in the end rancorous primary contest.

According to the Buck campaign, some of the die-hard Romanoff fans at the event ended up volunteering for the Buck campaign. (Others weren’t so sure that was the case.)

“We have a strong coalition of Democrats supporting my campaign,” said Buck. “As senator, you have to represent the entire state. That includes Republicans Democrats.”

Buck told the crowd that, as speaker, Romanoff “demonstrated that you can disagree without being disagreeable. That’s the type of attitude I will take to the U.S. Senate.”

The event came a day before the Democratic National Committee released a video as part of its campaign to underline views held by Buck that the DNC believes swing way outside the mainstream.

The video puts Buck together with far-right tea party-supported candidates such as Sharron Angle of Nevada, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Rick Scott of Florida and Joe Miller of Alaska.

“The Republican Tea Party 2010. Imagine, these people could represent YOU,” the ad warns.

Romanoff turned 44.

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The section featuring Colorado U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck seems tame compared to the sections on candidates in Florida and Kentucky and Nevada and Alaska, for instance.

“Colorado Republican candidate Ken Buck. He wants to eliminate the energy and education departments, says separation of church and state is too strictly enforced.”

Democratic party sources say that the established Republican Party and its officeholders want to shape the November election as a traditional choice between Republicans and Democrats, that is, between the outsider “fiscal conservative” party versus the “big spending” party of incumbency and power. But, say the Democratic strategists, the candidates the GOP has put up for election in many cases are not traditional Republicans. A Democratic source writing to the Colorado Independent Friday wanted to emphasize that candidates such as Buck and Dan Maes, who is running for governor, are not generic Republican candidates.

“They are flawed and as far out of the mainstream as you can imagine. And the Republican Party knows it. The [party] didn’t want [tea party candidates] Sharron Angle or Rand Paul or Ken Buck or Rick Scott or Linda McMahon to be their candidates because they know what will soon be obvious to voters: [those candidates] are flawed and out of the mainstream.”

Buck has said that he believes it would be good to move toward more local control of the schools. Any “plan” he might have to dismantle the departments of energy and education at this point seems vague and incremental at best, although startling in part for that reason.

The DNC video notably fails to mention Buck’s controversial stance on abortion and reproductive rights. Buck, like many of the major Colorado Republican candidates for office this year, including Maes and Cory Gardner, who is running a hard-right campaign against Betsy Markey in the Fourth Congressional District, has endorsed the so-called personhood amendment scheduled for the ballot. The amendment would grant full citizen rights to fertilized human eggs.

Buck made national news for saying he was against abortion in cases of rape and incest. But the fact is that the personhood amendment would outlaw all abortion, no matter how the pregnancy occurred, just as it would outlaw various forms of contraception and fertilization techniques and stem cell research, just as it would infringe upon the rights of pregnant women in ways difficult to measure.

A similar measure failed in a landslide vote in 2008 in Colorado but back then Republican candidates for office mainly did not endorse the initiative. They said it was too extreme.

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“For me this is a season of hope,” Kennedy declared, “new hope for a justice and fair prosperity for the many, and not just for the few. New hope.”

“And this is the cause of my life,” he went on, his voice strengthening and reaching his familiar cadence. “New hope that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American — north, south, east, west, young, old — will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege.”

A video tribute to the senator preceded his speech and was introduced by his niece, Caroline Kennedy, whose early endorsement of Obama proved crucial in his drive to the nomination.

Watch the entire Kennedy package on this C-SPAN video:

Here’s a transcript of Kennedy’s speech, provided by the DNC:

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Caroline.

My fellow Democrats, my fellow Americans, it is so wonderful to be here.

And nothing — nothing is going to keep me away from this special gathering tonight.

I have come here tonight to stand with you to change America, to restore its future, to rise to our best ideals, and to elect Barack Obama president of the United States.

As I look ahead, I am strengthened by family and friendship. So many of you have been with me in the happiest days and the hardest days. Together we have known success and seen setbacks, victory and defeat.

But we have never lost our belief that we are all called to a better country and a newer world. And I pledge to you — I pledge to you that I will be there next January on the floor of the United States Senate when we begin the great test.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

For me this is a season of hope — new hope for a justice and fair prosperity for the many, and not just for the few — new hope.

And this is the cause of my life — new hope that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American — north, south, east, west, young, old — will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege.

We can meet these challenges with Barack Obama. Yes, we can, and finally, yes, we will.

Barack Obama will close the book on the old politics of race and gender and group against group and straight against gay.

And Barack Obama will be a commander-in-chief who understands that young Americans in uniform must never be committed to a mistake, but always for a mission worthy of their bravery.

We are told that Barack Obama believes too much in an America of high principle and bold endeavor, but when John Kennedy called of going to the moon, he didn’t say it’s too far to get there. We shouldn’t even try.

Our people answered his call and rose to the challenge, and today an American flag still marks the surface of the moon.

Yes, we are all Americans. This is what we do. We reach the moon. We scale the heights. I know it. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. And we can do it again.

There is a new wave of change all around us, and if we set our compass true, we will reach our destination — not merely victory for our Party, but renewal for our nation.

And this November the torch will be passed again to a new generation of Americans, so with Barack Obama and for you and for me, our country will be committed to his cause. The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on.

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Not that there was much danger of it, but the generic “holiday” label won’t earn the Obama campaign any kisses from Focus on the Family’s campaign to reward “Christmas-friendly” retailers who call the holiday by its proper name.

The plain black mug adorned with an Obama ’08 logo looks suspiciously like the regular non-holiday variety recently offered for sale at the Obama for America’s accessories store, but supporters are assured its purchase will “celebrate the historic accomplishment of our movement for change” this “holiday season.” Orders placed before Dec. 15 are even guaranteed delivery by Dec. 25.

The Obama campaign, which counts more than 4 million donors among 10 million registered supporters, has continued raising money for the DNC and its transition operations.

In an article in this week’s Times magazine, Denver is listed alongside Portland, Ore., Houston, Baltimore and Minneapolis/St. Paul as a second-tier city on the rise now that big players like New York, Los Angeles and Miami have become virtually unaffordable to many in the creative class.

Denver is the “new Chicago,” reads the story, “chefy and musical with serious eco-cred and zero attitude.” That the city is loaded with “environmental capitalists dropping dollars” in downtown’s hip restaurants shouldn’t come as news to anyone who has spent a split second listening to Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter spout about the “new energy economy.”

But who knew that Denver’s big culinary selling point is a cheese platter? The article extols the cheese plate at Fruition, a 6th Avenue restaurant.