Mitt Romney ends his tour in Michigan with a warning that the US is going the way of Europe
WHILE PRESIDENT Barack Obama put pressure on European leaders to resolve their debt crisis at the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, Mitt Romney baked cookies.
Unflattering comparisons on Tuesday’s evening news showed that if the incumbent is blamed for everything, he also has opportunities to play the statesman.
A Romney economic adviser had criticised Obama for pushing Germany to prop up Greece.
Obama rebuked Romney in a press conference in Los Cabos, saying: “We have one president at a time and one administration at a time. Traditionally, the notion has been that America’s political differences end at the water’s edge.”
There were indications yesterday that Obama is emerging from the trough of recent weeks.
A Bloomberg national poll found that 45 per cent of those surveyed say they are better off than when Obama took office, compared to 36 per cent who say they are worse off. Three months ago, responses were almost evenly split. The same poll showed Obama leading Romney nationally by 53 to 40 per cent.
Three times a day for five days, in every speech of his six-state bus tour, the Republican candidate repeated that Obama “is taking us on a path to Europe, as sure as can be . . . We know what that leads to. In Spain they have 25 per cent unemployment . . .”
The America Romney visited shuddered at the thought of “socialist Europe”, mirroring Romney’s constituency – white, conservative, God-fearing and enamoured of free enterprise.
But it felt like an imitation of a mythical America of bygone days, stripped of complexity and ethnic diversity; the America of Rodney Atkin’s country music song, which blasts out at the end of every rally:
“What a picture-perfect postcard this would make of America,
“It’s a high school prom, it’s a Springsteen song,
“It’s a ride in a Chevrolet,
“It’s a man on the moon and fireflies in June and kids sellin’ lemonade,
“It’s cities and farms, it’s open arms, one nation under God.”
Romney confined his last stop, in Michigan, to three towns in the conservative west of the state. If elected, he reminded supporters, he would be the first president born in Michigan.
In Frankenmuth, population 4,944, he had breakfast with local businessmen in the Bavarian Inn Lodge, then related their gripes about “Obamacare”, “that great big dark cloud of uncertainty that overhangs business” (because it will require employers to provide medical insurance for employees) and financial regulation under the Dodd-Frank Bill, which Romney says dried up credit. Romney loves businessmen so much that he has even floated the idea of a constitutional requirement that all US presidents have three years of business experience.
On the main square in Little Bavaria, they played a polka version of Yankee Doodle Dandy. Beneath a glockenspiel clock, women in dirndls distributed strudel.
John P Gatza (74) thought Romney’s speech was “brilliant”.
The retired computer operator seemed obsessed with Obama’s origins. “President Obama is lying to the negro people,” Gatza said. “He’s a mulatto. Which half are they voting for – the black half or the white half? He is not the first black in the White House . . . I do not believe President Obama is a true American. He is Kenyan.”
In picture-perfect DeWitt, Linda Hundt, the owner of the Sweetie- Licious bakery, climbed into the press bus to announce cheerily: “Governor Romney and Mrs Romney are baking pies with us today!”
A tense showdown was going on outside, between the protesters who have dogged Romney at every campaign stop and his supporters, who were separated by barriers.
“Tax the Rich”, “Teachers Build Futures”, “Mitt’s Been a Bully”, and “Romney Economics – the Middle Class Under the Bus”, were a few of their slogans.
“No peace. No justice,” a group of African-Americans chanted loudly. The rally organisers tried to drown them out with loud music.
Romney is likely to lose the two predominantly Democratic states he claims as home, Michigan and Massachusett and admitted as much in DeWitt.
“Pie time,” he said as he entered Sweetie-Licious. Hundt predicted he would be “the next Abraham Lincoln”. “You don’t want to rush this,” he added as he rolled out the dough. “This is so much fun.”
The biggest debate of the five- day bus tour, between the liberal MSNBC and the conservative Fox News channels, was whether MSNBC had unfairly portrayed Romney as being out of touch when he called a touch-screen order form in a Wawa convenience shop “amazing”.
In a rare interview with CBS, Romney five times evaded answering whether he would rescind President Obama’s executive order allowing some 800,000 Hispanics who came to the US illegally as children to remain in the country.
He confirmed he was vetting the Cuban-American senator Mario Rubio, who could help with his “Hispanic problem”, as a running mate. We may learn more when Romney addresses a Latino conference in Florida today.
