RSSRomney gets turnout
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Rommey speaks Monday at the Country Inns of America on Horizon Drive in Grand Junction.
Mitt Romney’s first words to an enthusiastic Grand Junction crowd on a February day marked by occasional smatterings of snowflakes: “Don’t fall in the pool you guys.”
But then he urged them to jump into tonight’s party caucuses — and the state’s GOP presidential preference poll — and support his bid for the Republican nomination to take on President Barack Obama in November.
More than 200 people gathered around the pool at the Country Inns of America to await Romney after the fire marshal closed the main room after the first 440 people in line.
Romney’s visit came two days after another Republican, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, attracted more than 400 people to Montrose.
Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and head of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, recalled both experiences in a speech in which he repeatedly lashed out at Obama and left unmentioned the names of his GOP rivals.
“Based on the president’s own standard, he has failed,” Romney said to cheers soon after he stepped inside the main hall.
“He doesn’t deserve a second term.”
Romney’s comment was a reaction to Obama’s comment Sunday in which he said he had earned a second term. Three years ago, Romney noted, Obama said he would be a one-term president is he didn’t lower the unemployment rate below 8 percent “and it’s not been below 8 percent since.”
Without acknowledging how his Republican opponents have faulted Romney for providing a blueprint in Massachusetts for Obama’s centerpiece legislation, the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act, Romney turned fire on Obama, criticizing him for diverting $500 billion from Medicare to the health care legislation.
Individuals should be responsible for their own health care, Romney said, rejecting Obama’s individual mandate to purchase health insurance. His health care plan in Massachusetts, adopted in 2006, also included an individual mandate.
While the president called for an “all-of-the-above” solution to the nation’s energy demands, the Environmental Protection Agency has a “none-of-the-above” track record, Romney said, calling for an end to the “massive growth in regulations” during the last three years.
The United States takes in about $1.1 billion in tax revenues every year, and regulations cost the economy about $1.7 billion annually, he said.
Obama has left the U.S. military to wither to the point that the Navy has fewer ships than it did in 1917, and the Air Force the smallest number of aircraft since its founding in 1947, Romney said.
“This is a very enthusiastic and participatory audience,” Romney said at one point after a shout-out of support and when members of the audience recited a portion of the Declaration of Independence with him.
Reciting stanzas from “America the Beautiful,” Romney pointed to Obama’s promise to fundamentally reshape the nation to say that the president is out of touch nation’s history.
His presidency would be one of restoration of opportunity and freedom, Romney said.
“I don’t want to change us into something that we’re not,” he said.
During his governorship, Massachusetts rose to the top among the states in terms of educational accomplishment, Romney said.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, criticized Romney in a Front Range press conference Monday for his “failed economic record.”
“Why does Romney have what it takes on the economy when the fact is, during his time as governor, Massachusetts ranked 47th out of 50 in job creation while wages and income in the state fell?” Wasserman Schultz said.
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