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America needs a leader — Mitt Romney
November 01, 2012, 8:00 pm by Phil Schoch
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The endorsement of a candidate for President of the United States by a group of small community newspapers might seem a useless and perhaps delusional exercise in futility – particularly in a state where the ballots and the electors are virtually certain to go to the Republican ticket and the ultimate winner is expected to be chosen by a small plurality of voters in the Midwest.
But Americans of every mainstream political persuasion (including newspaper publishers) cannot ignore the seismic cultural shift that is shaking our country any longer. As hackneyed as the phrase has become, this election may truly be a turning point for our future.
No Presidential candidate, including Governor Mitt Romney, has ever been perfect and none can be expected to embrace our every viewpoint. But Romney is a proven leader who ironically offers a second chance at "Hope and Change,” a noble ideal that served its purpose in Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign but was quickly forgotten in his presidency.
A vote for Romney and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan is a vote for restoring sanity to politics.
It is also a vote for recovery of our cherished values, our national direction, our faith in government and our prosperity in all its manifestations. To borrow Ronald Reagan’s phrase, November 7 can be "Morning in America,” the dawn of a new and promising era.
On President Obama’s watch Americans have been cynically pitted against Americans for political gain, politics has trumped patriotism, and smoke-and-mirror theatrics and casual dishonesty have substituted for statesmanship and achievement.
The time when Democrats and Republicans shared fundamental beliefs forged over two centuries of democracy and capitalism and worked together to conquer national challenges has been lost.
Extreme ideologues far to the left of traditional American liberalism have been welcomed into the administration of a president whose early and all-consuming priority was to force a highly partisan national health care "reform” bill into law. Drafted in secret by Democrats, lobbyists and academic theorists, the bill and the way it was handled were early signals Obama would prefer to bulldoze his opponents rather than gain bipartisan consensus.
To finish setting the stage for what soon became the most divisive presidency since that of Richard Nixon, Obama and his supporters began to blame anyone but the President for his failings.
So no bridges close the partisan divide and the serious problems that confronted President Obama on Day One of his administration still confound him today: debt and deficits, unemployment and economic uncertainty.
A vote for Romney is a vote to lift our country from this muck and mire and get it moving again.
Romney is the candidate who actually understands how our economy works, how jobs are created, and how Main Street businesses can lead the way back to the "old normal.”
He is a self-made business success who is experienced in the art of negotiation – a skill that requires compromise, a reality both the right and the left must learn to accept if we want to saddle up and get this country going again.
As a Republican governor with a Legislature controlled by Democrats, Romney proved he can work with those who see the world differently when the other party also is willing to place ideas before ideology. Bipartisan plans for deficit reduction and other critical problems have been devised in Congress and elsewhere during Obama’s term, only to find the doors locked and the welcome mat snatched inside when they reached 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
President Obama has not seriously addressed the country’s mounting debt and staggering $16 trillion national deficit, despite pledging to make large reductions in both. Governor Romney and Paul Ryan have produced a plan to eliminate the deficit, both have the economic savvy and the guts to aggressively do something more than talk about the ruinous threat wanton borrowing and spending poses to America, its security and future generations.
The President’s conviction that more government engagement, more federal money and more taxes can solve any problem is foolhardy. Romney’s confidence in smaller, more efficient government and a less complex tax code with fewer loopholes suits our belief that the free-enterprise system and self-reliance should always be the first resort rather than the last.
Obama wants to raise taxes indiscriminately. For example, his advocacy of a 10 percent increase in the capital gains rate doesn’t just lighten the pockets of Wall Street speculators, it devastates those whose retirement income often comes from a small business they’ve built over a lifetime and other average people who may have earned shares in company stock plans or dared to invest in real estate.
Similarly, Obamacare – which the President relentlessly imposed on a majority of Americans who didn’t want it then and don’t want it now – threatens the middle income earners he claims to represent more than the top earners he reviles.
It most certainly will result in the loss or radical change of private company insurance most workers are happy with, fewer physicians, fewer doctors still who will accept government insurance, longer waits for routine health care and worse Medicare coverage. The President intends to rob the program for senior medical care of $716 billion to help finance his mammoth social experiment.
A vote for the Romney/Ryan ticket – with the election of Ted Cruz as Texas’ next U.S. Senator and a Republican majority in Congress – is a vote to repeal this mistake and replace it with a bipartisan health care policy that will be more affordable and effective.
These are a few among many issues that beg for the responsible solutions Governor Romney has proposed.
In our society, it is equally important to put an end to four bitter and barren years of duplicity, selfishness, arrogance, pseudo-intellectualism, hyper-partisanship, misplaced priorities, rampant political correctness, cronyism, and raw dishonesty that has become so commonplace many Americans are dismissing as inconsequential the deceit shrouding the terrorist murder of four Americans in Libya.
President Obama’s world where our allies doubt us and our enemies brazenly attack us and his failure to go forward since 2008 is why his slogan of "Forward” sounds so silly today.
We are crying out for real leadership. It is not too late to stop our downward spiral to becoming just another debt-saddled nation overshadowed by greater powers.
Four years is long enough to realize that unemployment bumping 8 percent month upon month and average household income falling more than 8 percent since the start of the Obama administration, doesn’t mean that we’re better off than we were when we elected the 2008 candidate of Hope and Change.
It is time to fire him and hire Mitt Romney.
Romney understands business and understands America. He is a proven leader who can put this country to work again and get our Main Street businesses on the move. We need only to give him that chance.
~ Roy E. Bode
Bode is President and Publisher of Highland Lakes Newspapers. He has been the editor of one of the largest metropolitan newspapers in America and covered the White House and Congress in the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, a time before much of the media came to be shamelessly partisan.
Reader Comments
Are you the same dude who writes all those ridiculous polls on the website that do nothing but support Romney or bash the president? If you covered the elections that you claim to have covered: 1) How in the world did you end up in Marble Falls? 2) That means you are old and need to hang it up. It's us young people that will be deciding things from here on and your aged ideas simply do not work with the changing times.
November 04, 2012, 7:20pm by Anonymous
Dude! Yep, I’m that dude, Dude. (Or are you an Anonymous Dudette?) Glad you get the point of those polls – sometimes the answers do express an opinion. Ever make you think?
Here’s how I ended up in Marble Falls. I started in this business when I was 14. I filed my first news stories from Washington, D.C. when I was 24. I worked night and day and weekends and holidays because that’s what it took to build a successful career. Then because my ancestors had worked like that to build Texas, I decided to come home. I worked some more and because this was still America, I was able to buy some newspapers in a place I wanted to live. If you’re lucky, America may still be able to give you the opportunity to build a career and a business yourself. Those aged ideas have given us that chance for nearly two-and-a-half centuries. Of course your generation can change things and you can enjoy the same opportunities as the citizens of Greece. Fortunately, according to Winston Churchill, you may have something to look forward to: “If you’re not a liberal at 20, you have no heart,” he said. “If you’re not a conservative at 40 you have no brain.” Unfortunately, even that great statesman didn’t always get everything exactly right. Some people are just smarter at 20 than others.
And by the way, the Publisher Dude signs his opinions: Roy E. Bode
November 04, 2012, 10:20pm by Roy E Bode
To John C.:
I respect your opinion on our endorsement of Mitt Romney, but some points you raised should be addressed.
First, I don’t agree that criticizing President Obama’s record is disrespectful. The day when Americans are afraid to question the performance of any politician is when we no longer are a Democracy.
Neither Republicans nor Democrats are solely responsible for the problems of today. You’re correct that there was no huge outcry when debt and deficit began to mount in the Bush administration – or when Democrat Congressmen were virtually forcing banks to make high risk mortgages to almost anyone who could sign an application.
But Barack Obama has been president for the past four years – not Bill Clinton and not George W. Bush – and it has been his responsibility to lead a return to prosperity. He has failed because he has been busy forcing his ideology on the country rather than working to bring it together.
Mitt Romney’s record shows he was a self-made business leader. Neither he nor Obama are from disadvantaged backgrounds, but Romney did not have “money to begin with” in his business career. PolitiFact.com, a media organization that monitors campaign claims, says “There's no evidence we saw that Romney's parents helped buy him a business career.”
He also gave away the money he inherited from his father to charity.
Similarly, claims that Romney was a corporate raider at Bain Capital and exported jobs to China have been discredited. Bain Capital is an investment banking firm. It puts money into businesses, including some its managers believe can be saved from failure. They’ve made more good choices on where to bet their investors’ money than bad – unlike the president whose administration has lost billions of taxpayer money in Solyndra and other bankrupt green energy companies run by his cronies.
I could find no reference to an Indiana company losing jobs to China because of Bain. But allegations about Global Tech, in neighboring Illinois, seem typical. The jobs were moved years after Romney left Bain, which owned only 10.3 percent of Global Tech.
Arguments that Romney only allowed the President’s campaign to dig through his recent tax returns – not ten years worth – are hugely ironic since the Obama administration has been one of the most secretive in modern times and has abandoned pledge after pledge of transparency, beginning with a promise to welcome C-SPAN in the room as Obamacare was drafted.
Finally, regarding the “shameless media: Newspapers and broadcasters should confine their viewpoints to editorials and talk shows. Reporters should construct their stories of balanced facts so readers can intelligently form their own opinions.
Reporters once were expected to fairly examine the deeds as well as the words of both Republicans and Democrats – including the president. They don’t often do that now as their disgraceful coverage of the Obama presidency and its Benghazi scandal readily illustrates.
Respectfully,
Roy E. Bode
November 04, 2012, 9:00pm by Roy E Bode
If the GOP really had wanted to steer this country back on the right track they would not have resorted to cheating like the Dems.. They had a chance to put in Ron Paul but instead chose to shut out the TRUE liberty minded candidates..Voting Libertarian is the only good option left for this sinking ship called the USSAmerica. Hope everyone can freaking swim.
November 02, 2012, 4:44pm by Roy
That says it all!!
November 02, 2012, 5:27am by Barbara
"shamelessly partisan" Look in the mirror.
November 02, 2012, 7:33am by Jim
I am stunned that Mr. Bode is not afraid to speak his mind!! The media is so biased, I almost can't stand to read or watch anything concerning the upcoming election. If Obama is reelected, the America we have known and loved in the past will be gone. I am terrified for my children and grand children!
November 02, 2012, 10:08am by Gayle
Since you made a long speech bashing basically the Obama for "all the problems", I found it basically to zero all the problems in Washington, DC on Obama. That is the wrong approach in today's world, and part of what contributes to a divided world in America.
When Bush was president, I did not bash him even though I voted for someone else. There is no need for this. Yet with your editorial you slash and burn the current president with disrespect.
Romney a proven business leader? There needs to be more in depth discussion about this. First Romney had money to begin with. With his money he had the ability to "raid" corporations, and many people lost their jobs. Sure there were some companies that were "saved". Did you know that the effect of Bain Capital actually increased the numbers of jobs going to China or did you conveniently not mention that fact? I personally saw a company in MY hometown in Indiana by Bain (yes, Mitt's company). It got to a point where the company and pension were raided by the action of Bain, and eventually people lost their jobs. Did you know that?
Also why don't Mitt release more of his tax returns? Others have done so including his daddy, who set the "standard". I do know there would be revealing information how Mitt made his money. I don't mind to know because he is running for office of the president (it is a public office). Now did you know there is a story that he actually profited from the auto bailout. He made millions of dollars while many people lost their living, and it is living proof, and while many jobs were outsources to China. For this, you state that he is a proven business leader?
You cannot be serious when you blame the deficit issue solely on Obama. You must look at the Republicans for blame as well. Where were you when Bush doubled the debt from $5 trillion dollars to $10 trillion dollars (while having two unfunded wars, and an unfunded prescription bill, AND having this huge tax cuts). Where was the outcry from the Republicans? There were none. Even VP Cheney stated deficits don't matter and NOW Obama is getting chewed out.
I know that all politicians do flip flop to please THEIR people. But Romney takes the award for doing the most. Romney has flipped flopped so many times, I am dizzy from it. He has been running for president for 6 years basically and he will do anything to get elected including changing his positions so many times.
You talk about your work experience working in the past in "shameless" media. Now this is a shameful piece of editorial news. I would say the exact same thing if an editor wrong a similar article bashing President Bush.I don't accept it in any way to disrespect any president including the current one.
You have a right to an opinion. But to bash the current president. No.
Be better than that!
November 02, 2012, 10:43pm by John C.
220 South Main St., Burnet, TX 78611 - Phone: (512)756-6136