Romney tries to take the middle on abortion?

He told the Des Moines Register: "There's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda.”

“But by executive order, not by legislation, he would reinstate the so-called Mexico City policy that bans U.S. foreign aid dollars from being used to do abortions, he said,” the Register writes.

Romney also believes Roe v. Wade should be overturned. From his website: “Mitt believes that life begins at conception and wishes that the laws of our nation reflected that view. But while the nation remains so divided, he believes that the right next step is for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade – a case of blatant judicial activism that took a decision that should be left to the people and placed it in the hands of unelected judges. With Roe overturned, states will be empowered through the democratic process to determine their own abortion laws and not have them dictated by judicial mandate.”

During a 2007 debate, Romney said he’d “be delighted” to sign a federal ban on abortion. A questioner asked, if “Congress passed a federal ban on all abortions and it came to your desk, would you sign it? Yes or no?” When it came to Romney, he said, “Let me say it. I'd be delighted to sign that bill. But that's not where we are. That's not where America is today. Where America is is ready to overturn Roe v. Wade and return to the states that authority. But if the Congress got there, we had that kind of consensus in that country, terrific.”

AP: “Still unclear is what Romney would do if a Republican-controlled Congress passed abortion legislation and presented it to him to sign into law. The Romney campaign sought to walk back the comments soon after they were posted on the Register’s website. ‘Gov. Romney would of course support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life,’ spokeswoman Andrea Saul said, declining to elaborate. Romney supported abortion rights when he first became Massachusetts governor, but he changed his position while in office.”

New York magazine: “It turns out all that time Mitt Romney spent discussing his position on abortion during the primaries was just a waste of time, because he's not planning on pushing any new abortion laws if he's elected. His talk of overturning Roe v. Wade, defunding Planned Parenthood, and adding a constitutional amendment banning abortion might have left the impression that he would, but the new moderate Romney doesn't consider the issue a priority.”

The New York Daily News: “So the human Etch A Sketch known as Mitt Romney has tried to pull a fast one. The Republican candidate flipped his position on abortion, then flipped it back, all the while hoping that no one would notice. Here's the question: If Romney flip-flops and no one is around to hear it, can he manage to get away with it?”

Hoping for growth? The Des Moines Register: “Asked why Iowans should trust his description of his tax plan, Romney gave a spirited rebuttal to Obama’s charges, saying he would cut federal income tax rates by 20 percent, reduce the corporate rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, simplify the tax code, close loopholes and get rid of some deductions. He said the adrenaline injected into the economy from these changes will bring in enough revenue that federal debt wouldn’t deepen.”

How he’d try to close the deficit between the amount of his tax cuts and revenue: “Say the number is $25,000 or $50,000 or whatever the number might be, and give deductions up to that amount. You can put housing into that. You can put charitable contributions into that,” he said. “You can fill that bucket as you’d like, and once you reach that level, that’s the total amount of your deductions.” He said higher-income people ‘might not have any bucket at all.’”

“Mitt Romney put the estate tax at the center of a wide-ranging attack on presidential rival Barack Obama’s agriculture policy during a campaign rally at a century farm here Tuesday afternoon, accusing Obama of seeking to increase taxes in an area where he’d prefer to eliminate them altogether,” the Des Moines Register writes. “But farm economy experts call the tax, assessed on the transfer of property upon death and derisively referred to as the ‘death tax’ by Republicans, a minor issue for the vast majority of Iowa’s farming operations.”