The Democrats are running an assortment of crazies, near crazies and off the chart crazies for a chance to square off against Donald Trump for the 2020 election. You had to know the RINO circus would also come to town in the form of one William Floyd Weld.
A two term RINO governor of Massachusetts (1991-1997), Weld, who hopes to run against Trump in the Republican primary, has had an interesting career to say the least. In 1996 he became the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, losing to Democratic incumbent John Kerry. In 1997 he resigned as governor to “focus on his nomination by Wild Bill to serve as Ambassador to Mexico but Senator Jesse Helms threw a wrench into the nomination and denied him a hearing before the Foreign Relations Committee.
An attorney, Weld worked for an international law firm in Boston and New York before taking a job as executive at a now defunct bankrupt college. He ran for governor of New York in 2006 but when the Republican Party endorsed John Faso, he withdrew. In a 2006 Fox News interview Weld described his “dream ticket” as “[Michael Bloomberg] and a Republican, or, you know, that might draw in a John McCain, even a Barack Obama, a Hillary Clinton, to pick a running mate of the opposite party.”
Weld publicly endorsed Mitt Romney in 2007 for the presidency and served as cochairman for his campaign but, when John McCain won the nomination, Weld endorsed Barack Obama not because he disliked McCain but because he supported much of Obama’s progressive agenda.
During the 2016 election Weld shed what he referred to as “carrying around the Republican Party’s social policies like a 30 pound weight” on his back and joined the Gary Johnson Libertarian ticket. He then spent a few years appearing at Libertarian conventions and endorsing libertarian candidates until he decided to return to the Republican Party in late 2018 and toss his hat into the 2020 circus.
According to the New Hampshire Journal, Weld was not exactly an effective governor. His campaign promises of spending cuts and cleaning up the government went the way of most political promises. By 1994, he appeared to have lost interest in his job. “Increasingly absorbed with national Republican politics…seizing every opportunity to fly to Washington for appearances…bragging about the book he and Speaker Newt Gingrich allegedly was going to write together.”
Over the years Weld has proven himself to be anything but conservative or moderate on most issues. He believes “partial-birth abortion is terrible” but government shouldn’t ban it because it is a woman’s right. In 1992, he gave a speech at the Republican convention attacking the pro-life wing of the party. In an effort to protect abortion rights in Massachusetts, Weld said he would allow women to terminate pregnancies through the ninth month, calling late abortions “a price I would pay in order to have government stay out of the thicket.”
In 1993, as governor, Weld supported an assault weapons ban. At the time he said, “I’m influenced by changing reality. I think it is legitimate to respond to changing conditions in society.” In 2005 he said he supported gun control but when he switched to the Libertarian Party he changed that position to opposing gun control, before supporting gun control again. Now that he has thrown his hat into the ring for 2020, he believes 2nd Amendment rights are individual rights, which doesn’t stop him from supporting Red Flag laws.
He has characterized semi-automatic firearms and standard capacity magazines as potential weapons of mass destruction even once telling an interviewer “the problem with handguns is probably even worse than the problem of AR-15s.
Weld supported same-sex marriage claiming to have “led Massachusetts on gay rights and that Massachusetts then led America.” In February 2013, he submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in favor of the legal recognition of same-sex marriage
He supports carbon trading credits but no carbon tax. Even though Weld believes that humans are causing global warming, he claims we should protect the environment with competition, not regulation. However, he supported the Obama EPA’s electric car mandate and stricter smog limits as well as expansion of environmental regulations.
He believes Trump’s “fear mongering about illegals” and his “deportation policy” is akin to Nazi Germany. “I can hear the glass crunching on Kristallnacht in the ghettos of Warsaw and Vienna.” Weld supports more H-1B Visas (to take more high tech jobs from Americans) and wants amnesty for all illegals in the country.
Weld once said that to defeat terrorism we needed to treat ISIS as a “gigantic organized crime family,” and take them on with FBI task forces rather than the military, which, by the way, he wants to cut 20%. After we neuter the military Weld believes we need to phase down our nuclear stockpile and no longer “intervene abroad when people are mean to each other.”
Weld was openly in admiration of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign, despite the fact that he and Gary Johnson were theoretically running against the Democratic ticket. He went so far to say that he’s “not sure anybody is more qualified than Hillary Clinton to be president of the United States.” It was suggested in an article in the Globe that Weld was mostly interested in” blocking Trump from winning and then working with Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour to create a new path for the party after the election.”
The path to taking the GOP nomination away from Donald Trump in 2020 is exceptionally narrow, and it certainly won’t happen with former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld. Jay Caruso, in an article at the Independent, says the notion Weld can knock Trump off is a pipe dream that will get served up by plenty of people who are trying to convince themselves more than anyone else it can happen. But it won’t,
“I assume Weld is running in hopes that a democrat beats Trump in the general election and he is appointed as ambassador somewhere. Maybe New Zealand! Isn’t that where Trump sent Scott Brown?” Spencer Kimball, executive director of the Emerson poll.
Sources: Weld, Not Sure Anybody Is More Qualified Than Hillary Clinton to be President, MSNBC; Bill Weld: The Worst Possible Primary Challenger to Take on Trump?, NHJournal
