After Outcry From Right, Mitt Romney Reverses Stance on Minimum Wage
It didn’t get much notice amid the buildup to Super Tuesday. But after conservative outcry over his support for raising the minimum wage, Mitt Romney quietly reversed his position this week.
“There’s probably not a need to raise the minimum wage,” the Republican front-runner told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow on Monday.
As recently as January, Romney said he was in favor of a hike in the minimum wage. “My view has been to allow the minimum wage to rise with the CPI [Consumer Price Index] or with another index so that it adjusts automatically over time,” he told a staffer for a labor-backed group that supports a raise. And he confirmed that stance last month, telling reporters: “I haven’t changed my thoughts on that.”
Romney took the same position as governor of Massachusetts, an office he held from 2003 to 2007, and as a candidate for president in 2008.
As Yahoo News reported last month, Romney’s support for a minimum wage raise—something Democrats have been pushing for and Republicans have generally opposed—provoked a furor on the right. “All it does is give the base another reason to be unenthusiastic about him,” conservative publishing magnate Steve Forbes, who made his own bids for the GOP nomination in 1996 and 2000, told us.