ROMNEY ADDRESSES HEALTH CARE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE DEBUT
March 6, 2011
By Erin McPikeBARTLETT, N.H. – Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney took a step toward addressing his health care law problem in his first public appearance in the Granite State this year.
Romney, who has told activists in the state privately that he will announce a presidential bid later this year, faces a hurdle in convincing the state’s GOP voters that they should help make him their party’s nominee: As governor of the neighboring Bay State, he oversaw the passage of a comprehensive healthcare law considered anathema to the conservative base for its similarities to the national healthcare law President Obama championed. Romney bypassed mentioning it in his speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington last month but owned up to some of its problems in a speech at the Carroll County Lincoln Day Dinner on Saturday.
“Our experiment wasn’t perfect – some things worked, some didn’t, and some things I’d change,” he said. “One thing I would never do is to usurp the constitutional power of states with a one-size-fits-all federal takeover.”
He joked, “You may have noticed that the president and his people spend more time talking about me and Massachusetts healthcare than Entertainment Tonight spends talking about Charlie Sheen.” But trying to put some distance between his position on health care and the president’s, Romney said several times that Congress should repeal Obamacare, which he said he would do if he were in a position to do so.
“Obamacare is bad law, bad policy, and it is bad for America’s families, and that’s one reason President Obama will be a one-term president,” he said, improvising from his prepared remarks.
As for his own “experiment,” he stressed that he did exactly what the Constitution intended for him to do: treat his own state as a laboratory of democracy by passing a healthcare plan just for the state. The constitutionality argument is notable specifically as the national healthcare law heads down a legal path that could wind up in the Supreme Court as the presidential race heats up.
ECONOMY
Romney used a teleprompter to address the nearly 300 Republicans gathered at the Attitash Grand Hotel in this snowy ski town, and he had the crowd applauding politely during some of his key economic lines with a standing ovation at the end.
While he spent most of his time talking about fiscal issues, he first needled the president on foreign policy.
“The President promised that his unique personal background would give him special insights into foreign policy,” he said. “What we have seen instead is a president that is unprepared and unequal to the task of leading the free world.”
Romney accused Obama of silence when protesters challenged Iran’s leaders and charged that the administration was caught off guard, noting, “The president and his team look like a deer in headlights.” And he complained that there hasn’t been such a foreign policy vacuum in the Beltway since Jimmy Carter was in the White House.
When the Bay Stater was campaigning in the last presidential election, his own foreign policy arguments included adding 100,000 more troops to the military. But earlier this year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates conceded that the military could cut troops and begin to trim the defense budget.
Romney, in his remarks Saturday, took issue with that by noting, “Given what’s happening in the world, we should not reduce our commitment to national security.” He added, “In particular, we should not cut the number of our men and women in uniform.”
He also called for establishing a ceiling on federal spending but only went so far as to say that historically the number has been fixed between 18 and 20 percent of GDP. He also commended House Republicans for trying to cut discretionary spending but lamented that it was only baby steps because discretionary spending is such a small part of the budget.
Romney did not recognize the new unemployment rate that was announced Friday – 8.9 percent – and instead berated Obama for policies that sent the unemployment rate well above 8 percent.
Nevertheless, Romney, whose approach in addressing the president in his speeches since Obama’s inauguration in 2009 has included mostly snarky remarks, threw in this, “I should tell you, I like President Obama.” But, he added, “He doesn’t have a clue how jobs are created.”
GRANITE STATE STROKING
Romney stroked the Granite State’s ego throughout his speech – both for its status holding the first-in-the-nation primary and for its own example of fiscal discipline.
He coddled up to New Hampshire voters by weaving local businesses into his discussion of the economy, and he blasted Obama for not learning any lessons when the president campaigned in the state’s Democratic primary four years ago.
“The president should have learned a lesson from New Hampshire,” he said. “Anyone who sees the row after row of textile mill buildings in Manchester knows that this state has experienced economic crisis. New Hampshire’s answer was to hold down taxes and red tape, to balance its budget, to keep government efficient, and to keep it small. And the end result was that the state became a capital of innovation and small business.”
He began his speech by smothering the state with praise for its role in the presidential primary process, calling his experience in the last campaign “exhilarating.”
The Carroll County speech was Romney’s first public event here since October, but he has been quietly trying to cull support in the state.
He has had low-key meetings in the state with just a few activists at a time, and he noted in his remarks Saturday that he visited the Amoskeag business incubator in Manchester, N.H., just a few weeks ago. Romney noted that he was impressed with the entrepreneurs he met in Manchester and complimented their efforts as innovators and job creators.
Before he launched into his speech, Romney’s wife, Ann, joined him on stage and said she recognized just about everyone in the room. For his part, when the program’s first few speakers stopped and broke for dinner, Romney bounded out of his seat to greet just about every table of attendees at the dinner.
