After Debate Tiff, New Romney PAC Ad Doesn’t Mention Santorum’s Record on Felons’ Voting Rights
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PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — A new ad released Wednesday morning from the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore Our Future focuses again entirely on Rick Santorum, dubbing the former Pennsylvania senator “the ultimate Washington insider.”
But absent from the ad is any reference to Santorum’s support of felons’ voting rights, which became an issue during Monday night’s debate when Santorum challenged Romney on the matter after a Restore Our Future ad titled “Facts” said that Santorum, “voted to let convicted felons vote.”
“Gov. Romney’s super PAC has put an ad out there suggesting that I voted to allow felons to be able to vote from prison, because they said I’m allowing felons to vote, and they put a prisoner — a person in a prison jumpsuit,” Santorum said during the Fox News/Wall Street Journal debate Monday night. “I would ask Gov. Romney, do you believe people who have — who were felons, who served their time, who have extended, exhausted their parole and probation, should they be given the right to vote?”
“First of all, as you know, the PACs that run ads on various candidates, as we unfortunately know in this,” Romney said before Santorum interrupted him, saying that he was looking for, “an answer to the question first.”
“We have plenty of time. I’ll get there. I’ll do it in the order I want to do,” an increasingly irritated Romney said.
Romney later said he does not believe felons should ever regain their voting rights, even upon release, a stance on which Santorum pounced, criticizing Romney for not doing more to change the law in Massachusetts, which allows felons who have served their time to regain their voting rights.
Romney defended his decision not to attempt to change the law by reminding Santorum that his overwhelmingly Democratic legislature did not agree with his position.
“In my state, I had a state that … said that they did not favor my position. I’m not letting felons who had committed violent crimes vote. I think it’s a…position that’s reasonable, and that’s the position I’ve got,” Romney said.
Here’s the latest Restore Our Future ad, which is set to air statewide in South Carolina:
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