Mitt Romney has been a successful businessman and as governor, enacted admirable health care reform that greatly reduced the number of uninsured residents in his state. And he is no doubt a decent man according to just about everyone who has known him in his adult life._____
But he seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding about Americans who are not like him. His ideas that sick people can just "fire" insurers giving them poor service, and that people without insurance don't "die in their apartment" -- he says "you go to a hospital, you get care" and a charity or the hospital just pays all your bills -- are a reflection of a man who has no idea what much of America deals with at all.
Most people will have views that evolve over time, but Romney -- in the span of just a few years -- has changed his positions on health care expansion, guns, and abortion.
He first defended, and then backtracked on his statement that 47 percent of Americans are entitled victims who don't "take personal responsibility and care for their lives." But it was far too detailed and revealing to be casually dismissed as inelegant. And it's a cruel depiction of half of the country, but more than that: It's not accurate. It's not an America we, as Americans, are familiar with.
The Las Cruces Sun-News says Hope and Change is now It Could Have Been Worse:
Now, Hope and Change has been replaced by It Could Have Been Worse. And the truth is, it very well could have been much worse. After 23 consecutive months of jobs gains, the unemployment rate finally dropped below 8 percent in September. While the economic recovery has not been swift or robust, it has been steady. And Obama's policies in rescuing the auto industry and propping up local economies_____
through the stimulus bill have contributed to that steady growth.
Obama's signature policy achievement in his first term, the Affordable Care Act, is a microcosm of all that has happened in Washington since he took office. It was passed without a single Republican vote. The original foundation of the bill, a government option for health insurance, was scrapped at the insistence of moderate Democrats. The bill was likely responsible for the rise of the Tea Party and the Republican wave of 2010.
Yet many of the bill's provisions, like protection for those with pre-existing conditions and the ability of young adults to remain on their parent's plan until age 26, have grown more popular over time.
The Lincoln Journal Star says Obama is the best candidate for the middle class:
Months before the presidential election in 2008, the world’s financial system ground to a standstill — thanks to a system so devoid of regulations and enforcement that banks and financiers no longer trusted each other._____
That’s the mess Barack Obama stepped into when he took office in 2008. Obama engineered a turnaround. In the hands of a president less pragmatic, less cool under pressure, it might not have happened.
After his first four years, Obama is a proven leader. He wins the Journal Star’s endorsement for president.
America needs a leader who will look out for the interests of the middle class.
The Philadelphia Inquirer says Obama would do a better job:
Like a carnival barker cajoling a mark into spending the last bills in his wallet, the Republican Party is counting on Americans' not remembering that they've seen this trick before._____
GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney wants voters to forget their familiarity with the prize he's dangling before their eyes - a return to the disastrous economic policies that preceded the recession. Given that context, Romney's prize is no better than a fake pearl.
Stop playing the blame game, the Republicans say to anyone who dares remind voters of what led to one of the worst economic collapses in U.S. history. They have kept former President George W. Bush under wraps lest he refresh voters' memories
The Sacramento Bee says Obama deserves re-election:
The last four years are instructive, but the next four years could well determine whether the United State repowers its economic engine and rebuilds its middle class, or whether it lapses back to the unequal and deficit-created policies of the Bush era. Although his positions seem to change on a weekly basis, Obama's challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, clearly would pursue tax cuts for the rich, on the discredited theory the wealthy would invest their savings in U.S. jobs. These "trickle down" theories haven't worked before and won't work now. Romney has also pledged to repeal health care reform, a transfer of wealth away from people who would receive subsidies to businesses and the wealthy who would be taxed under Obama-care._____
The scariest part of a Romney victory is the potential that he and Paul Ryan would attempt to shape the U.S. Supreme Court to match their religious and political beliefs, including opposition to abortion. As Ryan made clear in the debate Thursday, "Our faith informs us in everything we do." That could mean Romney would appoint justices who oppose abortion and gay marriage, even though Republicans normally pledge to "get government out of people's lives."
The Charleston Gazette believes Obama should get another term:
When Obama assumed the presidency in 2009, calamity was occurring. The U.S. economy was collapsing, shedding up to 800,000 jobs each month. Millions of homes were sinking into foreclosure because of Wall Street's fiasco with subprime mortgages bundled into flimsy securities._____
Steadfastly, Obama imposed rescue measures to halt the hemorrhage. He clamped new policing on Wall Street and injected stimulus funds to save American industries from destruction. U.S. automakers were resuscitated. Millions of construction jobs were created.
Gradually, recovery has gained ground. The stock market has doubled in value since those dismal times. Although patterns of employment may be permanently trimmed by Internet-era streamlining, the growth of jobs this year is hopeful.
The Winston-Salem Journal says the president is the best pick for the job:
Four years ago on this page, we endorsed Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona over Obama. We wrote that we were impressed with Obama, but McCain would “bring the Iraq war to a successful conclusion, work to end American dependence on foreign oil, reduce America's output of climate-changing gases and begin the rebuilding of our economy.”
The Democratic president has done all those things and more. He is calm under pressure and courageous in standing up for the rights of all Americans, including the poor, veterans, the elderly, women, gays and immigrants. In contrast, we’ve sometimes found it hard in the last few weeks to tell just what Obama’s challenger, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, really stands for.
Obama is not always as gregarious as many Americans might like him to be, but he is committed to his country and candid with it — to the point of releasing far more of his tax returns than Romney. While Obama commits the occasional gaffe, we can’t imagine him ever dismissing 47 percent of his fellow Americans — as Romney did, and later apologized for doing.
Ouch!!!
_____
The Herald says voters should re-elect the president:
The anticipatory greatness and in-practice greatness never aligned. For supporters and opponents alike, the Obama Administration has taken too long to pull out of the Great Recession, too long to end two wars, and too long to corral a hidebound U.S. Congress hindered by a never-yield partisanship. At times incremental steps feel workmanlike and uninspired. Nevertheless, from passing Wall Street reforms and rescuing the U.S. auto industry, to ending the war in Iraq and repealing don't-ask-don't-tell, Barack Obama has moved the country forward. There is also the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that, for all the hand-wringing and Tea Party blowback, was a landmark achievement that will extend healthcare to 32 million Americans in 2014 and not reject coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions._____
The Republican nominee, former Gov. Mitt Romney, is enjoying a bump in the polls after an impressive debate performance earlier this month. Romney's political vision, including preserving the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy, rolling back Obamacare, advocating a troubling redo of Medicare, and opening up the West to more resource exploitation, is not consonant with what America needs in 2012. His shape-shifting style -- Romney didn't always disparage global warming and national healthcare -- also makes him a risky, uncertain bet.
The Flint Journal urges voters to again choose Obama:
Republicans could learn from this. Moderation can be successful and urban issues can be important to both sides of the aisle, as Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has shown._____
We wish Romney had been willing to show the Mitt Romney that showed up at the first 2012 presidential debate throughout this campaign. We especially appreciated his more moderate demeanor. Romney's strength is his moderate views -- something he needs to spend more time on rather than kowtow to the very loud and extreme segments of his party.
For all of these reasons, his actions and their beneficial effect on our local community, we think President Barack Obama stands out as the person we need to remain at the nation's helm.
A proven leader, Barack Obama is the clear choice for president of the United States.
Alternative paper The Stranger comes up with a strange endorsement of the president:
This endorsement might seem like a no-brainer, but this shit is important, so let's go over it one more time. Electing Barack Obama to a second term goes beyond the standard Democratic boilerplate about how a Democratic president will nominate Democratic judges to the US Supreme Court—though that is vitally important, and is the reason we don't at all regret voting for John Fucking Kerry in 2004._____
The thing that's easy to forget in the middle of all this bullshit is that Obama has been a very good president. He saved us from a second Great Depression; he passed health care reform that future Democrats can utilize as a first step to a national health care system; he's made investments in science, transportation, and green energy that will pay off for decades; he supported gay marriage at just the right moment; and he's made dozens of advancements for equality and dignity (Lilly Ledbetter, DADT repeal, executive orders for humane immigration reform) that have changed millions of people's lives for the better.
Alternative paper the Arkansas Times endorses the president for re-election:
It was at what Romney thought was a private Republican gathering that he made his now-famous statement that 47 percent of the American people aren't worth doodley squat. After a video turned up on the Internet, Romney eventually made a sort of weaselly defense — "taken out of context," etc. — but it was so insincere that nobody bought it. He wasn't sorry for what he said; he was sorry he got caught. He's not sorry for shipping American jobs to China as a private financial manipulator either. He's sorry that Obama points it out. While Romney was exporting employment, President Obama's stimulus spending was creating and preserving jobs — as many as 3.6 million, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. A substantial number, though not enough to replace the jobs lost in the economic collapse that began under President George W. Bush, who believed, like Romney, in the efficacy of reducing taxes on the very rich, even if that means raising taxes on everybody else.
Americans are divided already; Obama at least wants to try to bring them together. The gap would widen under the elitist Romney, and even if he ever felt inclined to cease the class warfare and gender warfare his party wages, the party wouldn't let him. The choice this year is between a level-headed, well-intentioned, middle-of-the-roader and a political adventurer dominated by really nasty reactionaries. An easy choice, we believe.
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