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Columbus
Dispatch
In
Marietta, Ryan blasts Obama as a
fear monger
By Joe Hallett
Sunday November 4, 2012
MARIETTA,
Ohio — In the frenetic
final days of the presidential campaign, GOP vice-presidential nominee
Paul
Ryan yesterday beseeched voters to pause and contemplate what’s at
stake.
Speaking in a half-filled auditorium at Marietta College, as 1,200
chanted
“Three more days,” Ryan assailed President Barack Obama for making the
campaign
about “small things” at a time when voters face a monumental decision.
“We’ve
got a big choice to make,”
Ryan said in a 15-minute speech. “We’re not just picking a president
for four
years; we’re literally picking the trajectory of this country, the
meaning of
America, the kind of people we’re going to be, the kind of country
we’re going
to give our kids and grandkids for at least a generation. That’s the
kind of
election this is.”
Picking
up on a new line of attack
launched by Romney at a Friday night rally in West Chester, Ryan cast
the GOP
team’s interpretation on a comment that Obama made in Springfield on
Friday.
After the crowd began to boo when Obama mentioned Romney’s name, the
president
said, “No, no, no, don’t boo — vote. Voting is the best revenge.”
Ryan
told the Marietta audience
that Obama was “appealing to our lowest fears” by “ asking his
supporters at a
rally to vote out of revenge. Mitt Romney and I are asking you to vote
out of
love for country.”
The
Romney campaign is airing a
quickly prepared TV ad emphasizing the same point.
It
was Ryan’s 11th day of
campaigning in Ohio since Oct. 1, easily more than any of the other
candidates,
and his second visit to southeastern Ohio coal country in the past 14
days.
Romney campaign strategists believe that Ryan, a Catholic, appeals to
blue-collar voters and is particularly effective in making a case that
the
Obama administration has been hostile to coal production.
“Right here in the heart of
coal country,
we’ve got so much energy in this state, in this country,” Ryan said.
“Let’s use
that energy in this state and in this country to put people back to
work.”
The
Romney campaign’s message that
Obama has waged a “war on coal” has gained a foothold across eastern
and
southeastern Ohio, evident on ubiquitous billboards and in radio ads,
and by
the “Ohio counts on coal” placards that Marietta audience members
raised en
masse.
The
Obama campaign has countered
that coal-industry employment has increased in the past four years and
that the
president has invested $5 billion in clean-coal research, including at
Ohio
State University and the University of Toledo.
Read
the rest of the article at the Columbus
Dispatch
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