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Toledo
Blade…
Romney
set to rip rival on security
across globe
WASHINGTON
— Mitt Romney is
intensifying his efforts to draw a sharp contrast with President Obama
on
national security in the campaign’s closing stages, portraying Mr.
Obama as
mishandling the tumult in the Arab world and leaving the nation exposed
to a
terrorist attack in Libya.
In
a speech today at the Virginia
Military Institute, Mr. Romney will declare “hope is not a strategy”
for
dealing with the rise of Islamist governments in the Mideast or an Iran
racing
toward the capability to build a nuclear weapon, according to excerpts
released
by his campaign.
Mr.
Romney’s argument is he would
return the United States to an earlier era, one that would result, as
his young
foreign policy director, Alex Wong, said Sunday, in “the restoration of
a
strategy that served us well for 70 years.”
But
the GOP nominee has yet to fill
in details of how he would conduct policy toward the rest of the world
or
resolve deep ideological rifts within the Republican Party and his own
foreign
policy team. On Sunday-morning talk shows, the campaigns traded
accusations of
lies and distortions as the race headed into its final month.
The
Romney camp released a TV ad
accusing Mr. Obama of “not telling the truth about Mitt Romney’s tax
plan.”
Romney supporters repeated the charge on the talk shows.
“We
know it’s not true what they’re
saying about his tax plan,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R., N.H.) said on Fox
News
Sunday.
Former
House Speaker Newt Gingrich,
who said during the GOP primaries that Mr. Romney was running a
“fundamentally
dishonest campaign,” came to his former opponent’s defense. “The
charges on the
tax cuts are just plain wrong,” Mr. Gingrich said.
But
Mr. Obama’s aides and
supporters pressed their assertions that Mr. Romney’s tax plan doesn’t
add up
and that he misled voters during the debate.
“It
was a masterful theatrical
performance. It was fundamentally dishonest for the American people,”
Robert
Gibbs, an adviser to the President’s campaign, said on ABC’s This Week.
“This
was what he used to do in
private business,” Obama adviser David Axelrod said on CBS’ Face the
Nation.
“You have the ‘closer’ at Bain Capital and the basic theory is say
whatever you
need to get the deal and that’s what he did that night.”
He
said Mr. Romney was “dishonest
in his answers” and gave “a Gantry-esque performance,” a reference to
the
fictional dishonest evangelist Elmer Gantry.
The
Romney campaign sought to build
on the former Massachusetts governor’s performance in the first of
three
presidential debates.
“The
debate was a reset of this
campaign,” Ms. Ayotte said.
Republican
Mike DeWine, attorney
general in the battleground state of Ohio, agreed.
“This race fundamentally
changed Wednesday
night in Ohio and across the country,” Mr. DeWine said.
“The
President … couldn’t defend
the last four years,” Mr. DeWine, a former U.S. senator, said on CNN’s
State of
the Union. “Maybe that’s not because he’s not a good debater. We know
he’s a
good debater. He couldn’t defend the last four years because you can’t
defend
it. You can’t defend not getting the job done.”
Democrats
said Mr. Obama was not
happy with his performance and would improve in the upcoming debates.
The
President went to California on
Sunday for a two-day swing to raise millions of dollars from
celebrities and
wealthy donors.
Mr.
Romney, campaigning in Florida,
sought to build on the momentum from last week’s debate performance.
The
Republican told a crowd of
about 12,000 in Port St. Lucie that he had enjoyed himself, ticking off
a list
of Obama shortcomings he said he had exposed during the first debate.
“Now
of course, days later, we’re
hearing his excuses,” Mr. Romney said. “And next January we’ll be
watching him
leave the White House for the last time.”
Mr.
Romney’s planned foreign policy
address at VMI is aimed at throwing Mr. Obama on his heels over his
handling of
unrest in Libya and elsewhere.
Obama
campaign spokesman Jennifer
Psaki, dismissing what she called Mr. Romney’s fourth or fifth attempt
to
explain his global intentions, said the bar is high for Mr. Romney to
convince
voters he’s ready to be commander in chief…
Read
the rest of the article at the Toledo
Blade
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