Door-knocking Romney reprises missionary days
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney could be excused for having flashbacks to the 1960s when he went door to door in Berlin, New Hampshire, on Thursday.
The former Massachusetts governor worked in France as a Mormon missionary from 1966 to 1968, one of the church’s thousands of earnest young men (mostly) who knock on doors and proselytize. At that point Romney had plenty of doors slammed in his face, but on Thursday, not so much.
“This is a lot easier,” Romney quipped to Reuters. “People speak English. They wish you Merry Christmas. They don’t think you’re a salesman. People used to come to the door [in France] and wag their fingers: ‘No, I don’t want anything.’”
Many French people at the time were “not happy to see Americans, because we were in Vietnam at the time. That was tough,” he added.
Romney strode around the depressed paper milling town in northern New Hampshire, talking to residents in their front doorways, to dog-walkers, and to people in passing cars who slowed down at the curious sight of Romney, handlers and trailing horde of media. At one point he broke into a run, leaving even his bodyguards behind.
Most residents seemed pleased, if sometimes startled, to see Romney appear at their front doors. “What on earth is he doing up here,” exclaimed Doris Dube, 82.
Ron Paul may struggle outside Iowa
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) – Congressman Ron Paul is one of the favorites to win the Iowa caucuses vote on January 3 but his libertarian and isolationist message may to be too much for Republican voters and party grandees as the nomination process moves to other states.
“What he could do is turn a victory in Iowa into a heart attack for the Republican establishment. They see him as someone they really can’t relate to very much,” said Tobe Berkowitz, a communications professor at Boston University.
A poll this week showed Paul leading the race in Iowa, where he has a strong organization, ahead of Republican front-runners Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.
But New Hampshire, the next voting state in the nomination race, is still a stronghold for Romney who leads polls here by double digits. The real key lies beyond the January 10 New Hampshire primary when the focus shifts to the heart of the Republican primary states.
Most opinion polls for South Carolina, the third state to hold a 2012 Republican nominating contest, give a resounding “no” to Paul. The Texan has been polling in single digits in the state, home to many active and retired military personal who may not take kindly to Paul’s non-interventionist military doctrine.
“He’s a libertarian Republican. Will that play in South Carolina, Georgia and elsewhere? The fact that he’s a libertarian throws a lot of monkey-wrenches into Republican orthodoxy,” Berkowitz said.
On Tuesday, Paul outlined his views to high school and college students in Manchester, and didn’t hold back.
Romney keeps laser focus on Obama in New Hampshire
BEDFORD, New Hampshire (Reuters) – Republican Mitt Romney kept his sights on President Barack Obama on Tuesday as he kicked off a series of events aimed at locking up his front-runner status in the important early voting state of New Hampshire.
The former Massachusetts governor spoke to a fired-up crowd of supporters at the historic Bedford town hall.
“You guys need to get out and ask a friend or two to vote for us on primary day,” Romney said. “We want to win in New Hampshire.”
In his 15 minute remarks, delivered with a teleprompter, Romney mentioned Obama’s name 20 times.
He attempted to draw a contrast between what Romney called the president’s “entitlement society” and massive federal government, and an alternative “merit-based society.”
“In a merit-based society, people achieve their dreams through hard work, education, risk-taking, and even a little luck,” said Romney, whose father, George Romney, was an auto executive and governor of Michigan.
Romney will tour New Hampshire by bus for the next three days, speaking repeatedly on the subject of jobs and the economy,
In New Hampshire, fringe candidates get their moment
Bipartisanship flourishes among fringe candidates. Democrat Vermin Supreme and Republican Hugh Cort share a laugh before Monday night’s debate at Saint Anselm College.
New Hampshire voters looking for something different got to size up some other presidential candidates on Monday night. The questions were pointed, the answers often succinct, sensible and serious. But some of the platforms were narrowly focused and, well, a bit wacky.
“I’m here to tell you about thorium, an overlooked energy alternative,” said Robert Greene, a Democrat from Mountain View, California. “If politicians are having any discussion that does not include thorium, they have not had a serious energy discussion.”
It was the “Lesser Known Candidates’ forum” at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. Organizers put out the welcome mat to any candidate, Republican or Democrat, who is on the ballot for the New Hampshire presidential primary but has not appeared at a nationally televised debate.
Obscure candidates are drawn to New Hampshire by its low $1,000 filing fee. The state’s Jan. 10 presidential primary will have some 44 candidates listed.
On Monday, ten Republicans and seven Democrats held separate debates. The candidates were mostly earnest and surprisingly unflappable during lightning rounds of questions that ranged from Second Amendment rights to instability on the Korean peninsula to health care to a comprehensive energy policy to selecting Supreme Court justices.
Bear Betzler of Philadelphia was stumped, though, when asked which of the crop of top-tier Republicans he might pick as his running mate. “I can’t say I’m adequately prepared for that eventuality,” said Betzler, whose biggest concern is the high national debt but who said he is “not that into politics.” Ultimately he said former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney “would be a good second.”
Huntsman gets New Hampshire newspaper endorsements
By Ros Krasny
(Reuters) – Republican Jon Huntsman, who has based his 2012 campaign for the White House almost exclusively on a strong showing in New Hampshire, has been rewarded with endorsements from two newspapers in the state with an early primary election.
The Keene Sentinel and the Valley News both praised the former U.S. ambassador to China in editorials on Sunday.
The endorsements were another snub to Mitt Romney, former governor of neighboring Massachusetts, who has dominated most opinion polls in New Hampshire this year, but whose lead has recently narrowed in the race for the Republican nomination.
In late November, the only state-wide New Hampshire newspaper, the conservative Union Leader, endorsed former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich over Romney.
Huntsman, a former governor of Utah, has pitched himself as a moderate Republican alternative who is best suited to challenge President Barack Obama’s bid for re-election in November next year.
He has held over 100 campaign events in the small Northeast state, and polls suggest his message has started to catch on with New Hampshire’s independent voters.
Gloves stay on in Gingrich-Huntsman N.H. debate
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) – The gloves didn’t have to come off on Monday night in a Lincoln-Douglas style debate between Republican rivals Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman, who found more agreement than strife on foreign policy issues.
The debate pitted the current Republican front-runner against the former Utah governor who is trailing in the dead-last zone among the pack of candidates running to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama in November 2012.
Designed to avoid scripted answers and one-line zingers, the debate covered subjects including engagement with Iran, the rise of China and the future of U.S. relations with Pakistan.
But the format was the main focus, and candidates hoped to showcase their foreign policy expertise without strict constraints on the time each could take to answer a question.
Former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Gingrich has become the front-runner largely on the back of strong performances in a series of candidates’ debates.
As he likes to remind his audience regularly, Gingrich is a font of historical knowledge, with no fact – even including the GNP of Ghana in 1975 – too trivial.
Huntsman, a three-time U.S. ambassador, is polling in the low single digits nationally and has staked his campaign on a strong showing in New Hampshire. The debate was one of about 200 events he will have done in the state by time its primary is held on January 10.
Gingrich, Romney turn up the heat in New Hampshire
HOLLIS, New Hampshire (Reuters) – The tense campaign between Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney heated up further on Monday in New Hampshire, where Romney’s lead in opinion polls has shrunk in recent weeks.
The frontrunners for the 2012 Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama campaigned near to each other in the Manchester area.
Their biting remarks about one another reflected how New Hampshire – long seen as a lock for Romney, a former Massachusetts governor – now has the look of a competitive primary.
During an interview with Fox News, Romney called for Gingrich, a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, to return $1.6 million in consulting fees he received from the troubled mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Asked about the comment during a campaign stop, Gingrich fired back at Romney.
“If Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he has earned from bankrupting and laying off employees over his years at Bain (Capital), then I would be glad to then listen to him,” Gingrich said. “And I bet you $10 – not $10,000 – that he wouldn’t take the offer.”
The slashing retort was vintage Gingrich, and showed why Romney’s campaign has begun only recently to attack Gingrich.
Romney, gay vet meet, differ in New Hampshire
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) – Republican Mitt Romney probably expected a different scenario in a Manchester diner on Monday when he tucked into a booth to make small talk with an older man wearing a “Vietnam Vet” baseball cap.
Romney has been vocal in opposing cuts to U.S. military spending, and chatting up a veteran would seem like an easy warm-up to a day on the campaign trail.
But military spending wasn’t on the mind of Bob Garon, who served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.
Garon is gay, and a newlywed. He was eating at the Chez Vachon diner, as he does most days, with his husband, Bob Lemire, 73. The couple — whom friends sometimes call ‘Bob One’ and ‘Bob Two’ — married in June after 15 years together.
Same sex marriage became legal in New Hampshire in 2010, but the state’s Republican-controlled legislature has moved toward repealing the law.
When Romney sat down next to Garon, the Epson resident asked him, “If two men get married, apparently a veteran’s spouse would not be entitled to any burial benefits or medical benefits or anything that the serviceman has devoted his time and effort to his country, and you just don’t support equality in terms of same-sex marriage?”
Romney reiterated his support for the Defense of Marriage Act. “And we apparently disagree,” he added.
Gay Vietnam vet tackles Romney
Republican Mitt Romney probably didn’t know what hit him in a Manchester diner on Monday when he tucked into a booth to make small talk with an older man wearing a “Vietnam Vet” baseball cap.
Romney has been vocal in opposing cuts to U.S. military spending, and chatting up a veteran would seem like an easy warm-up to a day on the campaign trail.
But military spending wasn’t on the mind of Bob Garon, who served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.
Garon is gay, and a newlywed. He was eating at the Chez Vachon diner, as he does most days, with his husband, Bob Lemire, 73. The couple — whom friends sometimes call ‘Bob One’ and ‘Bob Two’ — married in June after 15 years together.
Same sex marriage became legal in New Hampshire in 2010, but the state’s Republican-controlled legislature has moved toward repealing the law.
When Romney sat down next to Garon, the Epson resident asked him, “If two men get married, apparently a veteran’s spouse would not be entitled to any burial benefits or medical benefits or anything that the serviceman has devoted his time and effort to his country, and you just don’t support equality in terms of same-sex marriage?”
Romney looks to bounce back after $10,000 bet gaffe
HUDSON, New Hampshire (Reuters) – Republican Mitt Romney was back on familiar turf in New Hampshire on Sunday, looking to steady his White House campaign after a potentially damaging gaffe over a wager he offered at a candidate’s debate in Iowa.
Speaking to reporters after a town hall meeting, Romney made light of the incident on Saturday when he offered to bet Texas Governor Rick Perry $10,000 over what Romney wrote in his book about Massachusetts’ controversial healthcare law that he helped engineer as governor.
Perry did not take the bait. But Republicans and Democrats alike jumped on Romney, painting the multimillionaire former venture capitalist as out of touch with the concerns of regular Americans.
“After the debate was over, (wife) Ann came up and gave me a kiss. She said I did great, but that ‘betting is not one of my strengths,’” Romney said.
The former Massachusetts governor said he was confident of his standing in the Republican primary field, even though former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich has soared to the top of opinion polls nationally and in early primary voting states like Iowa and South Carolina.
Romney still holds a solid lead in New Hampshire, where he owns a vacation home, but has lost ground over the past month to Gingrich.
“It’s very fluid. These polls have bounced all over the place in the past year,” Romney said.
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