[VIDEO] Romney to Hannity: I Wasn't Clear Enough How Bad Obama Was for America

Nearly a year after his presidential campaign ended in failure, Mitt Romney says he wasn't clear enough in 2012 on one basic message: how bad President Obama's policies are for the American economy.

Appearing on Fox News Channel's "Hannity" on Tuesday, the former Massachusetts governor admitted, "I did not make that message clear as I should have during my campaign."

A Washington Post story on Tuesday revealed that Romney's own polls throughout the campaign showed he was likely to lose to Obama, even though reports immediately after his loss showed his entire campaign was caught by surprise.

Urgent: Should GOP Stick to Its Guns on Obamacare? Vote Here. 

He might not have won the nation's highest office, but he still has advice for those currently in Washington.

Nothing will get done in government, he said, unless all parties come together. "And this president has not shown that inclination, frankly, since he's been in office. And the country's in the balance."

With a government shutdown more than a week old and a debt ceiling  deadline looming, Romney said, "These are real concerns that will affect a lot of people, and the president's got to engage and work in the job of governing, not just campaigning and posturing."

Via: Newsmax

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[VIDEO] Jindal: We Should Nominate a Governor in 2016

Washington lawmakers Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio wouldn’t be Louisiana’s Jindal first choices for the Republican nomination in 2016. Instead, the governor wants to see one of his own get the nod.

“I do think the next president, I do believe, should come from the ranks of the governors,” Jindal said on CNN on Monday afternoon. “I do think governors, unlike the folks in D.C., are actually implementing solutions.”

He pointed to President Obama as an example of somebody who needed ”on-the-job training” and implied that somebody with gubernatorial or executive experience would not. As for his own 2016 plans? Jindal said he hadn’t decided, and is focusing on next year’s midterm elections.

Via: NRO

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House Oversight Committee Finds “Fraud and Abuse Risks” Within Obamacare

Florida Governor Rick Scott is doing the “I-told-you-so” dance after having his concerns about the Obamacare “Navigators” program validated by the findings from an investigation conducted by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. 

The House committee report found that “scam artists” are already trying to infiltrate the navigator program. The report also found that Health and Human Resource (HHS) officials “conceded” that there was “no way to identify authenticity of certified navigators.” 

Scott expressed his concern that these so-called “Navigators,” who will not have any insurance background, be collecting massive amounts of personal information for the federal government, such as tax information and Social Security numbers. 

Democrats like Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz have called Scott’s Obamacare concerns excuses because she believes ” he has been hell-bent on obstructing the smooth implementation of ObamaCare,” adding that he has also “done everything he can to block it and impede its implementation.”

 Here are the key points of the committee’s findings after looking into how HHS was going about implementing Obamacare. “In May 2013, top HHS officials… expressed concern about the ‘ability of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services staff to authenticate, register, and certify everyone who will be involved in the consumer assistance process.’” 

“One CMS whistleblower warned that because it may not be possible to track every computer and hard drive used by Navigators to gather applicants’ personally identifiable information (PII), the sensitive information is vulnerable. 

The CMS whistleblower also warned that the devices used to scan supporting documents may store and save the images containing sensitive PII.” “With an influx of Navigators, Assisters, and individuals employed by non-governmental organizations like Enroll America engaging in ObamaCare outreach, it will be very difficult for consumers to differentiate between a scam artist and a legitimate source of information.” 

Via: The Shark Tank

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Democrat Coakley to run for Mass. governor in 2014

BOSTON –  Martha Coakley, the popular Democratic state attorney general who lost the 2010 U.S. Senate special election to Republican Scott Brown, is joining the race for Massachusetts governor, her campaign announced Sunday.

Coakley planned a formal campaign announcement Monday morning in her hometown of Medford, followed by a three-day blitz of 18 cities and towns. She intended to listen to voters and discuss her vision for strengthening the state's economy and improving its education system, her campaign announced.

Coakley, 60, didn't immediately return a message seeking comment Sunday.

She's joining a field that has become crowded since Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick announced he wouldn't seek a third term next year.

The other Democrats already in the race include state Treasurer Steven Grossman, former Obama administration health care official Don Berwick, former federal and state homeland security official Juliette Kayyem and former Wellesley selectman Joseph Avellone.

The candidacy of another Democratic gubernatorial hopeful, state Sen. Dan Wolf, is pending the outcome of discussions with the state Ethics Commission over his ownership stake in Cape Air.

Via: Fox News
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Pence and The Revolution: Five reasons he might be the 2016 dark horse to watch

He’s more charismatic than Scott Walker, more conservative than Chris Christie and, unlike so many of the top-tier 2016 Republicans, he has actually run a state.

So why isn’t Indiana Gov. Mike Pence generating the kind of buzz worthy of a top-tier candidate?

Probably because while his opponents have been show horses, he’s been a work horse. And that makes him a dark horse.

Here are five reasons why we should take Pence’s chances very seriously:

1. The résumé’ - “[A]s a former congressman and now a governor, [Pence] has garnered that hard-won ‘two-fer’ status, thus giving him a very credible résumé,” says Cheri Jacobus, a GOP strategist.

Being a governor is important for a variety of reasons, both substantive and symbolic. Before becoming a governor, “Mike Pence’s policy bandwidth consisted of tax cuts,” said one strategist. “But…when you’re a governor, you’re actually in charge of running things.”

Of course, merely being a governor isn’t enough. You have to have governed effectively, and that’s just what he’s done. “Pence comes from a state that is a success story. It’s actually gaining industrial jobs. It’s a right-to-work state now,” added the strategist.

Aside from work experience, it also helps to have had life experience — and a compelling story to tell. Again, Pence has that. “He is an evangelical Midwestern conservative who has the compelling family story to tell of his grandfather being an Irish immigrant who drove a bus in Chicago,” says John Dunagan, a public affairs executive who worked on the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign.

Via: The Daily Caller

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Jerry Brown's Tough-Love California Miracle

As wind turbines spin like massive, inverted egg-beater blades against the bluest California sky, Jerry Brown steps into the sun. Since he took office in 2011, Brown's hawklike brow has been cemented in a scowl as he battled to stave off bankruptcy for the Golden State. But as he high-steps to the microphone today, the 75-year-old governor is loose and smiling. Soon he's riffing about his first stint in Sacramento in the 1970s as "Governor Moonbeam," joking of the nickname, "I earned it with a lot of hard work!"

Big Oil's Big Lies About Alternative Energy

Brown has come to a warehouse district just south of Oakland to cut the ribbon on the Zero Net Energy Center – the first large-scale commercial building in the nation to be retrofit to consume no more energy than it produces. With function following form, the building will house a green-energy training program, where apprentice electricians will earn union wages while learning to install things like solar-power inverters and electric-car charging stations.

In recent years, California industry has received intense lobbying from Republican governors like Rick Perry of Texas – who has been trying to lure companies to his state by promising low taxes, cheap labor and minimal environmental regulations. For California's governor, the Zero Net Energy Center stands as proof that such efforts are "really screwed up" and that America's economic progress need not be a race to the bottom. "We're trying to make it work for everybody – corporations, workers and the environment," Brown says. "This is the wave of the future, and we're going to push it right across this country, and right across the world."

Via: Rolling Stone

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IOWA, VIRGINIA GOVS: OBAMA OFFERED NO VISION FOR SECOND TERM IN DEBATE

Republican governors in Iowa and Virginia said on Tuesday that President Barack Obama failed to present his vision for a second term in his debate against Mitt Romney, echoing the concerns of undecided voters who thought the same after the debate. 

Iowa Governor Terry Branstad said Romney “explained with crystal clarity the difference between him and the President, and nowhere was that difference more stark than on the issue of the national debt.” Branstad noted that Obama “has racked up $5.5 trillion in national debt that will take years to pay off.”

“At the debate, the President reiterated that nothing will change about his policies in the next four years, ensuring that the debt will pile higher and generations to come will pay the price,” Branstad asserted. “That’s a legacy we don’t want to leave.”

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell stated Romney “reinforced the clear choice facing the American people” on jobs, taxes, debt, healthcare or foreign policy. 

He lamented Obama’s “tax-hiking, government-growing record” has “failed to turn around our economy or increase our nation’s influence around the world.”

“Americans know that we can’t afford another four years like the last four years, and tonight’s debate confirmed that Mitt Romney is the leader we need to deliver the change that Americans expect and deserve,” McDonnell continued. 

After Obama’s lackluster first debate against Romney, even progressive journalists said it was not not just good enough for Obama to attempt to tear down Romney. Those like NBC’s David Gregory and Chuck Todd said Obama now needed to present a clear vision for what his second term would be. 

And according to Messrs. Branstand and McDonnell, Obama did not even come close to reassuring the country that he had a vision to turn the country's economy around if he wins a second term. 

Via: Breitbart

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Obama surrogates can’t quite spin a win after Denver presidential debate

DENVER — Mitt Romney emerged as the decisive winner of the first presidential debate with President Barack Obama on Wednesday night, a reality even the president’s surrogates were unable to spin.

No defining moments emerged from the debate, which lasted 90 minutes. The zingers from both sides were underwhelming. During the evening, the two candidates mainly wonked out and discussed their differences on everything from Medicare to taxes to deficit reduction.

But style, more than substance, led to Romney’s clear advantage. The former Massachusetts governor was aggressive, and he made his arguments without any sign of hesitation. He repeatedly asserted himself and even interrupted moderator Jim Lehrer occasionally to ensure that he could respond to the president’s remarks.

Obama, by contrast, seemed tentative. Where Romney launched straight to his answers, the president often stuttered and rambled, as though struggling to figure out what point he ought to make. Romney regularly directed his comments against the president, but Obama repeatedly turned to the American people to ask, “Does anybody out there think …?”

The president failed to land punches on health care, and he did not even mention Romney’s “47 percent” comments about the number of Americans who do not pay income tax, which were used to damning effect in a recent campaign ad.

After the debate, the spin room buzzed with reporters asking variations on the question, “Was Obama off his game?” (RELATED: Watch the debate here)

Surrogates for Romney were ebullient, while Obama campaign officials declared victory by retroactively lowered expectations for the debate, saying repeatedly often that Obama had done “what he needed to do” in the debate.

Via: Daily Caller

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Ryan, others pound away at Obama at Derry gathering

DERRY — Touting Mitt Romney as the right choice for hard economic times, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan urged New Hampshire voters to get out the vote on Nov. 6.

Ryan spoke to a packed gymnasium of supporters at Pinkerton Academy on Saturday morning, hitting Barack Obama on the economy and delineating a clear choice between the Romney/Ryan ticket and the current administration.

“We have a choice to make, and Mitt Romney and I give you the choice,” said an upbeat and animated Ryan. “There is a very clear choice between two different futures. It's not too late to get it right and turn the economy around and secure the promise of America that our parents secured for us.”

Ryan hit on national defense and repealing Obamacare, but for the majority of his speech, the focus was on the economy and Romney's qualifications to turn the economy around.

The reelection of Obama would result in a continuing stagnant economy and foster dependency on the government. Ryan said the Republican ticket would work to get more people out of poverty and into the middle class.

Ryan contrasted Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts with that of Obama as President.

He noted that under Obama, average annual household income has a dropped by $4,000, while household income rose in Massachusetts by $5,000 while Romney was governor.

“He treated people respectfully and reached out across the aisle,” Ryan said. “He balanced the budget without raising taxes. That is the type of leadership we need.”

Via: Union Leader

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AP: Mitt Romney Runs Campaign Like CEO He Was

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitt Romney seems to be both candidate and campaign CEO these days, and some Republicans say he's trying to do too much.

He reviews TV ads and polling data on an iPad. He writes many of his speeches. He's often talking like a consultant.

One instance of that gave him trouble last week, when a secretly taped speech to donors was posted online just as polls show him narrowly trailing President Barack Obama.

"Here are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them," Romney said at the May fundraiser. "And so my job is not to worry about those people — I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Democrats accused Romney of writing off half of the country. The former Massachusetts governor insisted he was just talking about the polls and trying to make the point that 47 percent of people probably will support the Democratic incumbent, no matter what their reasons.

Some Republicans grimaced.

They say Romney's explanation was evidence of a big problem with his campaign: The nominee simply is taking on too many duties. Romney's job is to inspire voters, they say, and not manage every detail of his campaign.

"He was talking about the electorate as if it were a ledger sheet," said Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist who worked closely with Romney on his 2008 presidential campaign. "It diminishes him."

More broadly, the episode illustrated Romney's leadership style, which he's honed over decades in the private sector, where he was an actual CEO. It also provided a look at how he might lead the country as president.

Romney spokesman Kevin Madden defended Romney's approach.

"It's his campaign," Madden said. "On a campaign like this, everything is derived from the candidate's vision, and the reason they are offering their leadership to the American people."

During three decades in private business, Romney made big money turning around struggling companies with hands-on leadership and a laser-like focus on the smallest details.

Via: AP

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ARIZ. GOV. JAN BREWER SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER PROHIBITING PUBLIC BENEFITS TO YOUNG ILLEGAL ALIENS

(TheBlaze/AP) — Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Wednesday ordered state agencies to deny driver’s licenses and other public benefits to young illegal immigrants who obtain work authorizations under a new Obama administration policy.

In an executive order, Brewer said she was reaffirming the intent of current Arizona law denying taxpayer-funded public benefits and state identification to illegal immigrants.

Young illegal immigrants around the nation on Wednesday began the process of applying for federal work permits under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

The federal policy defers deportations for that group if they meet certain criteria, including arrival in the United States before they turned 16 and no convictions for certain crimes.

After President Barack Obama announced the policy change in June, Brewer labeled it “backdoor amnesty” and political pandering by the Democratic president.

Arizona has been in the vanguard of states enacting laws against illegal immigration.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned parts of the Arizona enforcement law known as SB1070 but ruled that a key provision on requiring police to ask people about their immigration status under certain circumstances can be implemented.

The Obama administration challenged that law in 2010 after Brewer signed it into law.

Via: The Blaze

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