White House hopeful Mitt Romney and newly minted running mate Paul Ryan were set to try and energize supporters in North Carolina yesterday after they hit the road on a bus tour across must-win US states, selling themselves as the duo who can “save the American dream.”
Fresh from a surprise early morning rollout of Romney’s vice presidential pick in Norfolk, Virginia, the Republican pair struck out across the state pushing a policy of fiscal responsibility and savaging US President Barack Obama as a job-killer bent on changing the country for the worse.
Romney’s choice, cast as a bold move by his party, is sure to transform the presidential race less than three months before November’s election, and the two men electrified crowds as they took to the stump.
Photo: AFP
The campaign also aims to sharply alter the trajectory of debate away from Romney’s business record, taxes and image as an out-of-touch multimillionaire and toward larger issues such as how to revitalize the nation’s sputtering economy.
“We can turn this thing around,” Ryan, 42, told cheering supporters in Norfolk.
“High unemployment, declining incomes and crushing debt is not a new normal. It’s the result of misguided policies,” the seven-term US congressman said, in a pointed criticism of Obama.
At subsequent stops, in Ashland and then Manassas, where the campaign said the rowdy crowd topped 8,000 people, the tip of Ryan’s verbal spear grew sharper.
Obama has been pushing a “government-centered society with a government-run economy. It’s not working. It’s never worked before,” Ryan said, rallying supporters in Manassas, outside Washington.
“We were promised equal opportunity, not equal outcomes,” he added to huge applause.
In recent weeks, Romney has slumped behind Obama in opinion polls, with the incumbent taking a clear lead nationally and in most of the dozen swing states that will decide the Nov. 6 election.
A Fox News national poll out Thursday put Obama at 49 percent to Romney’s 40 percent, while a CNN poll had Obama at 52 percent, seven points up on the former Massachusetts governor.
However, by picking Ryan, a favorite of small government conservatives, and embarking on a four-day bus tour across battleground states, Romney hopes to gain the upper hand in the race.
The pair went on the offensive in Ashland, with Romney ominously criticizing Obama as “a president who’s trying to change America ... into something we might not recognize.”
He also blamed the Obama campaign for the bitterly negative tone of the race.
By contrast, he praised his running mate as an “intellectual leader in our party,” someone who earned respect from Republicans and Democrats alike for having “made friends on both sides of the aisle.”
Romney sought to forge Ryan’s identity as a responsible small government fiscal hero, before the opposition had a chance to do.
Ryan chairs the US House of Representative’s Budget Committee, and earlier this year unveiled a budget plan — widely backed by Republicans — that slashes federal spending, lowers taxes for individuals and corporations and overhauls entitlement programs like the Medicare and Medicaid health care.
Obama’s Democrats immediately went on the attack, alleging that the cuts would hurt those who rely on such aid to pay for health care, including the elderly.
“Mitt Romney has chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said.
With the US Congress saddled with its lowest approval ratings on record and Ryan’s status as a Washington insider — he was first elected at just 28 years old — he may have his work cut out to appeal to ordinary voters.
Yet an excited Ryan vowed to “win this campaign.”
The decision to pick Ryan was welcomed by US Senator John McCain, who said the Republican ticket now featured the “strongest team to return America to prosperity and to defend our interests abroad.”
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS