2012 Presidential Campaign Blog

Richmond Times-Dispatch Endorses Mitt Romney For President

RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH: “PRUDENT CHANGE: ROMNEY PROMISES HOPE FOR RECOVERY”

Prudent Change: Romney Promises Hope For Recovery
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Editorial

October 28, 2012

http://goo.gl/nQsVx

The tone of the 2012 campaign might best be captured by the need to begin with an emphasis on what the Republican candidate will not do. Mitt Romney will not raise taxes on the middle class. He will not destroy Medicare. And he will not lie to the American people every time he opens his mouth.

Political campaigns exaggerate grossly, play loose with the facts and cast the opposition in the worst light imaginable. Yet it is difficult to recall a campaign less truthful than President Obama's in 2012. Its foundation rests on deeply misleading assertions about Romney, a strategy made inevitable by the current administration's weak record. Barack Obama's accomplishments are too few to merit re-election. So he attacks.
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In the service of accuracy, let's look at the generally straightforward proposals and philosophy espoused by Romney, who strikes us as both more earnest and more accomplished than your average presidential candidate.

Romney understands the value of free enterprise, appreciates its utterly unique ability to alleviate poverty, unleash creative endeavor, spread wealth and lift the burden of ceaseless backbreaking labor. In this year's presidential campaign, he is alone in that respect.

Romney's plan to spur economic growth — a phrase that seems absent from the Obama vocabulary — offers a plausible and pragmatic path to a more energized private sector, the essential element in reviving a robust economy that builds jobs, raises individual incomes, rewards innovation and halts the suicidal expansion of public debt.
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Romney will improve a dysfunctional tax system, as did Ronald Reagan, to encourage work, investment and risk-taking. Less complexity means less corruption and cronyism. By contrast, Obama claims a $60 billion annual tax increase on higher-income Americans, including successful small businesses, will magically erase trillion-dollar deficits while providing extra cash for education, medicine, research and all-around middle-class happiness.

Obama pretends that Republican reformers pose the only real threats to Medicare and Medicaid. Romney acknowledges that these programs face forced marches to bankruptcy unless someone has the courage to fix them. He promises to examine means-testing, market solutions, competition and state-level innovation. His is a progressive approach.

Romney also promises to repeal Obamacare — a singularly necessary step to restore America's entrepreneurial spirit — and replace it with reforms that will not bust the budget, not trample individual rights, not undermine the independence of patients and medical professionals.
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This is the right approach, expressed with the appropriate mix of confidence, clarity and humility. Romney is ready to take command, as he demonstrated in Monday's debate.

Four years ago, Barack Obama's campaign and election generated remarkable pride and optimism, even among many of those who did not vote for him. He seemed filled with promise.

But his presidency has been filled with disappointment and failure. Those issues that inspired the most passion among his supporters — principally having to do with the war powers of the executive and the tension between civil liberty and national security — have been the ones on which his promise-breaking has been most feckless.

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During the debates, the president's personal attacks on his opponent were, most often, met with strong but dignified answers. The president showed himself to be the less presidential of the two contenders. As a result, we know now who is better suited to lead a great but troubled nation.

Mitt Romney has succeeded as a family man, governor, entrepreneur, Olympic leader. He is a man of character, a problem-solver, a turnaround specialist. He has earned our enthusiastic endorsement. America needs President Romney.

**In compliance with copyright laws, this version of the editorial is excerpted**

Minneapolis Star Tribune 2012 Minnesota Poll: Obama 47% Romney 44%

Minnesota Poll: Obama leading, but Romney sees gains
Article by: RACHEL E. STASSEN-BERGER , Star Tribune

As the presidential race tightens across the country, a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll has found that it is narrowing here as well, with President Obama holding a 3-point lead and Republican Mitt Romney making gains in the state.

The poll shows Obama with support from 47 percent of likely voters and Romney earning backing from 44 percent -- a lead within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Cincinnati Enquirer Endorses Mitt Romney For President

CINCINNATI ENQUIRER: “MITT ROMNEY, A GOVERNOR AND BUSINESS LEADER WITH A RECORD OF SOLVING PROBLEMS”

Presidential Endorsement: Mitt Romney
Cincinnati Enquirer
Editorial

October 28, 2012

http://goo.gl/VZyxd

The No.1 issue in our region and our nation today is how to recharge our economy and get more people working in good-paying jobs. President Barack Obama has had four years to overcome the job losses of the Great Recession he inherited, but the recovery has been too slow and too weak. It’s time for new leadership from Mitt Romney, a governor and business leader with a record of solving problems.
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Romney’s experience as a chief executive, business leader and governor position him to be the best candidate to lead us into a new era of streamlined but effective government with a renewed focus on maintaining America as the world’s leading economy. The best indicator of how Romney would lead is his record as governor. There we have evidence of a Romney who governs more moderately than he was forced to campaign in the long runup to the presidential election.
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He came into office in 2003 facing an immediate budget shortfall of $450 million and projections of much worse. It was Massachusetts’ worst recession in decades. Romney’s approach was businesslike, and he didn’t spare any sacred cows. He made deep cuts in local government funding and to education. He didn’t raise state taxes, but he increased fees for many government services, which raised hundreds of millions. He took heat from businesses for closing loopholes that saved them money but cost the state revenue. He blocked companies from transferring intellectual property to out-of-state shell companies, and he barred banks and other companies from avoiding taxes by paper restructuring. The bottom line: He erased the deficit in Massachusetts (which was required by state law) and left office with a $600 million surplus. He replenished the state’s reserve fund two years into his term, pushing it to $2 billion by the time he left office in 2007.
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Romney’s plans for recovery revolve around the economic principles of reducing government regulation, cutting corporate taxes and opening more global markets. It’s an approach consistent with who Mitt Romney is – a businessman and a moderate conservative who doesn’t believe so much in government’s making things happen as he does in lifting government interference so they can happen.
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If Romney can stabilize and expand the U.S. economy, his greatest foreign policy contribution could be employing reinvigorated U.S. economic muscle to influence the global economy. This is a precarious time for America. We’d expect a President Romney to lead toward the center, to resist the calls for a hard turn to the right that are sure to come from within his party. Romney has accomplished progress with divided government – the Massachusetts General Court (the state’s Legislature) is overwhelmingly Democratic. The gridlock in D.C. is entrenched, and we’d urge him to make a priority of finding the common ground and using his leadership to forge compromise, coalitions and solutions. Romney as president should stay true to who he is – a moderate leader who can work with the left and right, with business and with government, and who will set an example, both as an individual and as the leader of the United States of America.

**In compliance with copyright laws, this version of the editorial is excerpted**

Sioux City Journal Endorses Mitt Romney For President

SIOUX CITY JOURNAL: “MITT ROMNEY: HE’S THE CHANGE AMERICA NEEDS”

Mitt Romney: He's The Change America Needs
Sioux City Journal
Editorial

October 28, 2012

http://siouxcityjournal.com

In a presidential election centered on domestic economic issues at a crucial moment in history, voters this year must decide if they are or are not satisfied with and confident about the direction in which America is moving.

We are neither satisfied nor confident. In our view, change is needed.

Because we wish to see the country chart a new course to economic vitality and fiscal sanity, the Journal endorses former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to be the next president of the United States.

In Romney, who we endorsed to be the Republican nominee before both the 2008 and 2012 Iowa Caucuses, we see a man possessed of successful, executive decision-making experience in both the private and public sectors who understands economics and who would apply necessary conservative principles to meeting the country's fiscal challenges. We would rather put our faith in the blueprint put forth by Romney than in another four years of Barack Obama.

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America can't afford another four years like the last four years. Continuing this course of growing government, more spending and more borrowing eventually will crush this nation. It simply isn't sustainable.

The approach articulated by Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, is fundamentally different. To create more consumer confidence, business opportunities, jobs, investment, trade and domestic energy production, Romney promises less. His vision involves less federal spending, lower taxes for individuals, families and businesses, a smaller number of government programs and streamlined regulations on businesses and industries (according to the Small Business Administration, the annual cost to Americans of federal regulations is $1.75 trillion).

In our view, this is the roadmap to short- and long-term economic growth, strength and prosperity.

To enact his plan, Romney must forge consensus within Congress and rally the nation. Romney founded his own venture capital and investment company and turned the once-troubled 2002 Winter Olympic Games into a profit-maker. He led a state in which registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans nearly three to one and 85 percent of the Legislature was Democratic at the time from a $3 billion budget deficit when he took office in January 2003 to a $700 million budget surplus by the end of 2004. In other words, he knows how to build success, achieve reform and bring people of different political stripes together in support of goals.

Romney represents the change America needs.

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**In compliance with copyright laws, this version of the editorial is excerpted**

Quad-City Times Endorses Mitt Romney For President

QUAD CITY TIMES ENDORSES MITT ROMNEY: “READY FOR CHANGE”

Ready For Change
Quad City Times
Times Editorial Board

October 28, 2012

http://qctimes.com

We invested heavily in hope back in 2008.

Our 2012 endorsement of Mitt Romney comes with an imperative for change.

The change that we’d hoped would elevate our economy wound up woefully short. The presidential gambit to place health-care reform ahead of economic recovery jeopardized both. President Barack Obama expended all of the presidential leadership on muscling through health care reform, leaving little for implementation and none for significant economic recovery.
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This year, the Republican ticket is led by a candidate with a proven record of moderate governance, legislative leadership and compromise. Mitt Romney arrives at the presidency with global leadership experience and a track record of turnarounds.

No need to rely on hope. His record includes evidence of change. He changed the trajectory of a failing U.S. Winter Olympics. He changed the path of Massachusetts with a health care plan we admire, even if Romney is now less than enthused.

He picked a running mate who has specific deficit reduction plans, not just hopeful intentions. Ryan’s plan cuts too deeply in some areas and needs significant compromise, particularly on the future of Medicare, but these plans are in the hands of a presidential team experienced in compromise.

Our interest in Romney jelled into support through the debates, where we saw his leadership and pragmatic managerial experience shine through. He didn’t just say what ardent Republicans wanted to hear. In fact, he stated his unequivocal support for women’s contraception rights, knowing it would incense a huge number of Christian and Catholic voters.
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We’re confident he’ll be as responsive to all Americans if elected president.
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Today, we endorse a successful leader focused on economic recovery and growth and deficit reduction. We endorse a proven manager who won’t need on-the-job training. We endorse a compromiser who offers the best hope of breaking congressional gridlock.

Most of all, we endorse change.

We endorse Mitt Romney for president.

**In compliance with copyright laws, this version of the editorial is excerpted**

http://qctimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/our-presidential-endorsement-ready-for-change/article_99b6bf4e-20a2-11e2-b68d-0019bb2963f4.html

The Toledo Blade Endorses President Obama

The Toledo Blade Endorses President Obama

Re-elect President Obama
Toledo Blade // Editorial

A second term for President BARACK OBAMA would be a better outcome for Ohio, Michigan, and the rest of the country — and would offer more hopeful prospects for the next four years — than would his replacement by his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. The Blade recommends the President’s re-election.

Detroit Free Press Endorses President Obama

Detroit Free Press Endorses President Obama

Detroit Free Press Endorsement: Top reasons to re-elect Obama

Detroit Free Press // Editorial

What’s the best case Barack Obama can make for re-election? Let’s start with the stunning record of accomplishments he has compiled over the last four years:

• General Motors and Chrysler are thriving — a long, long way from the edge of insolvency, which is where Obama found them on his first day in office. Bridge loans and managed bankruptcies turned them around, and stable growth followed soon after. Is there anything more important to people here in Michigan?

• The economy has grown jobs for the past 30 months, after hemorrhaging 4.9 million in 2009. The bleeding began to stop when Obama convinced Congress to authorize $831 billion in federal stimulus funds, and employment has grown, slowly but inexorably, since the beginning of 2010.

• The Affordable Care Act, a broad set of private-sector and government reforms, is bringing millions of formerly uninsured Americans under the umbrella of reliable health care. It’s a quantum leap forward that has bested both legislative and legal challenges.

• Of the two costly wars started during the Bush administration, one is over and the other winding down. Osama bin Laden and at least 14 other al-Qaida leaders are dead, and their terrorist network is in tatters. Meanwhile, Moammar Gadhafi, responsible for the deaths of more Americans than anyone except bin Laden, was deposed with U.S. help. Not since the fall of the Berlin Wall have the nation’s geopolitical fortunes improved so markedly.

• That’s to say nothing of the president’s lower-profile victories: for women, who regained the right to seek legal redress for pay discrimination when Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law; and for the thousands of gay and lesbian Americans who won the right to serve their country without lying about who they are.

On the strength of those achievements alone, Obama’s second four-year term ought to be a no-brainer. Most two-term presidents can’t claim to have gotten as much done.

The country is safer. Its economy and its largest industry have been restored to health. And health care reform, fought out over 50 years in the U.S. Congress, has at last begun in earnest. When Republicans say pejoratively that Obama “can’t run on his record,” they’re 2peddling1 partisan nonsense and indulging a myopic fiction.

The Free Press enthusiastically endorses Barack Hussein Obama for four more years as president.

The Raleigh News & Observer Endorses President Obama

The Raleigh News & Observer Endorses President Obama

Obama, again

Raleigh News & Observer // Editorial

Ever since he electrified the 2004 Democratic National Convention with a keynote speech, Barack Obama of Chicago had been marked as a man who might be destined for the White House. Destiny was fulfilled sooner than expected. The then-Illinois senator, a first-termer, was introduced to the next convention four years later as the nominee after a brutal series of primaries that saw him overcome candidates that included Hillary Clinton, the accomplished first lady who now is his secretary of state.

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If re-elected, there is no reason to think that he will not continue to be concerned for the middle-class and the disadvantaged, and that his domestic focus will be on helping people who need it while strengthening the country’s economic underpinnings. Combined with a successful foreign policy, the case is strong: We believe President Obama has earned another term.

Victory Rally with Mitt and Ann Romney in Englewood, Colorado on Saturday, November 3, 2012

Victory Rally with Mitt and Ann Romney in Englewood, Colorado on Saturday, November 3, 2012

Boston, MA – On Saturday, Mitt Romney and Ann Romney will attend a Victory Rally at the Comfort Dental Amphitheatre in Englewood, Colorado.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Event: Mitt Romney and Ann Romney Attend Englewood Victory Rally

Location:

Comfort Dental Amphitheatre
(Fiddler’s Green)
6350 Greenwood Plaza Boulevard
Englewood, Colorado

Doors Open: 3:00 PM MDT

Invite Time: 6:00 PM MDT

Program Time: 6:25 PM MDT

Tickets: Tickets may be obtained by visiting www.mittromney.com/CO

Victory Rally with Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Ann Romney at The Square at Union Centre in West Chester, Ohio on Friday, November 2, 2012

Victory Rally with Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Ann Romney at The Square at Union Centre in West Chester, Ohio on  Friday, November 2, 2012

Boston, MA – On Friday, Mitt Romney, Ann Romney, and Paul Ryan will attend a Victory Rally at The Square at Union Centre in West Chester, Ohio.

Friday, November 2, 2012

Event: Mitt Romney, Ann Romney, and Paul Ryan Attend West Chester Victory Rally

Location:

The Square at Union Centre
9285 Centre Pointe Drive
West Chester, Ohio

Doors Open: 4:30 PM EDT

Invite Time: 7:00 PM EDT

Program Time: 7:30 PM EDT

Tickets: Tickets may be picked up at the following locations during the following times:

Liberty Township Victory Center
4879 Mercedes Drive
Liberty Township, OH 45011

Lebanon Victory Center
30 West Main Street
Lebanon, OH 45036

Kenwood Victory Center
8220 Northcreek Drive
Cincinnati, OH 45236

Colerain Victory Center
8240 Clara Ave
Colerain Township, OH 45239

Friends of John Boehner
7908 Cincinnati-Dayton Road, Suite I
West Chester, OH 45069

Monday to Friday from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM

Tickets may also be obtained by visiting www.mittromney.com/OH