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.
We support many aspects of the president’s health care reform. But so much is left undone because of the president’s inability to win popular support for the reforms. For example, the health care exchanges so critical to implementation are stuck at square one. Nov. 16 is the federal government deadline for establishing exchanges, yet 35 states have balked. Even the president’s home state has ignored the directive.
Cedar Rapids Gazette:
President Barack Obama has made his mark during his historic first term. The Affordable Care Act of 2010, a massive overhaul of the health care system that has some features we support. A stimulus measure that the majority of economists said was necessary to avoid an even deeper recession. Some flawed, but needed financial sector reforms. Efforts to expand green energy development._____
But where the nation was most in need — restarting the economy and making significant progress on reducing our enormous national debt that recently soared past $16 trillion and dangerously threatens our future well-being — the president and his administration have come up short.
And more recently, the ever-changing account of how his administration has responded to and explained — or hasn’t — the assassination of a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya is raising troublesome doubts about the chain of command and whether there’s been a cover-up.
Souix City Journal:
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.
(Illinois) Daily Herald:
Here, finally, we are. After months of seemingly endless campaigning, we arrive at the last few days of the race for the White House. After all that campaigning, many have openly wondered how anyone could still be undecided. We’re not among those who wonder. We believe the choice for president in 2012 is both difficult and profound. Whomever is elected will be trusted in large measure with the fate of a stumbling economy, a foreboding debt crisis, a gridlocked government and an unstable world._____
But now after weeks of debate and reflection, and a good amount of uncertainty on our own part along the way, we have reached our decision. What we would give in this troubled time for certainty, for inspiration, for the exhilaration that Barack Obama aroused in so much of America four years ago.
Here’s what we believe: We believe that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are good and decent men who care about the country. We believe each possesses extraordinary skills and talent. But, philosophically, it is clear that one trusts government too much; the other appears to trust it too little.
In endorsing Illinois’ favorite son in 2008, we declared Obama “has a chance to be a great president.” We said, “He offers a new kind of politics. A politics that breaks down the old partisan walls. A politics that strives to bring people together. A politics of hope.”
Cincinnati Enquirer:
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.
Obama took office in January 2009 as the nation’s economy was imploding. That year alone, 4.7 million U.S. jobs were lost and the unemployment rate ballooned past 10 percent. The president can’t be blamed for that. In fact, he and his administration took bold action to prevent further disaster.
Four years later, though, we’re still at risk of backpedaling into another recession, the housing market is still suffering and we have a sense of drift, not of common purpose.
Florida Times-Union:
What this nation needs is a turnaround expert._____
We need someone who knows how to deal with a balance sheet drowning in red ink.
We need someone who has that American strain of pragmatism in an era of toxic partisan politics.
We need someone who has made his fortune, who doesn’t need this job but is seeking simply to serve the public.
That man is Mitt Romney. Following in the footsteps of his father who was successful in the private sector, Romney has dedicated his later years to public service.
Shreveport Times:
Voters have just nine days until Election Day. And while many who may be undecided are still asking the question, why change from Barack Obama to Mitt Romney on Nov. 6, The Times has already reached our conclusion and is recommending Romney as our choice._____
It is true that in 2008 we endorsed the change promised by Obama, but the reality today is — four years later — we have little confidence Obama will be more successful managing the economy and the budget going forward. Indeed, we feel change is needed again.
And we believe Romney fills that ticket.
The Oklahoman:
Mitt Romney is a self-made man running for president against an incumbent who rejects the notion that society flourishes when government gets out of the way. From health care to regulation to energy policy to taxation — in so many areas — Barack Obama believes that government must dominate our lives and redistribute our incomes._____
Obama was a poor choice for president in 2008. He's an even worse choice now. Oklahomans solidly rejected Obama four years ago. They knew what the people in too many other states apparently did not — that this man is simply not qualified to hold such a high office. He has inferior business skills and leadership qualities, little appreciation for the sacrifices that the successful make and an anemic respect for America's starring role on the world stage.
Richmond Times-Dispatch:
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.
His offense is intended to distract from policies that have led to nearly four years of economic stagnation, stubbornly high unemployment, collapsing middle-class incomes, increasing rates of poverty, rising prices for life's most basic necessities — and shrinking American influence around the globe. Obama has proven, in Americans' real-world experience, that massive government spending, suffocating regulatory expansion, feckless diplomacy and exploding debt do not foster peace and prosperity. Quite the opposite. It is — with considerable urgency — time to change.
The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, CA):
The president elected on Nov. 6 should spend his term steering the nation away from fiscal catastrophe. That will take economic growth, reform of entitlements, curtailed federal spending — and bipartisan cooperation. Mitt Romney’s path in life could not have been better charted to lead him to this mission at this moment. Voters should send him to the White House to perform the biggest turnaround of his career._____
Romney understands that the country’s most pressing issue is a stalled economy weighed down by huge annual deficits and accumulated debt, a mess that Barack Obama not only failed to clean up, but compounded.
The resulting predicament is stark. Americans are struggling as the percentage of adults in the workforce approaches record lows. The past four years have been the worst for employment since the Great Depression.
Cape Cod Times:
For the next 600 words or so, we could focus on the pros and cons of the various tangible positions held by President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney._____
Instead, we are going to focus on what is arguably the most important intangible: A candidate's philosophy and vision.
It was the vision of hope and change that convinced us four years ago to support then-Sen. Barack Obama over Sen. John McCain. Today, there is little hope in how another four years of an Obama administration would swiftly and effectively lift our country out of its economic doldrums, and there is little change in how Washington operates.
The confluence of events that toppled our economy in 2008 and sparked the worst recession since the 1930s were not the president's fault. No credible economist believed we would dig out quickly. But the pace of recovery and the troubling lack of progress on key debt and spending issues is most certainly the result of the administration's policies, actions or inactions.
Wisconsin's Sun Prairie Star:
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want to end the sluggish economy through tax cuts and incentives for investment.
For example, the Romney-Ryan plan to make a permanent, across-the-board 20 percent cut in marginal tax rates gives an immediate boost to all Americans. Coupled with plans to cut the corporate rate to 25 percent and making the research and development tax credit permanent, this should jumpstart a sluggish economy with more spending by putting more money in peoples’ pockets and incenting businesses to invest in new research and development again.
Certainly there are areas of wide disagreement between President Obama and his running mate Joe Biden and Romney-Ryan, but one area where we know the latter can do better is in foreign policy.
Instead of being an Apologizer in Chief and lying to the American public regarding the terrorist attack on the American Embassy in Benghazi, Romney and Ryan will demonstrate leadership by working with allies such as Israel to make American interests more secure throughout the world.
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