USANews版 - Biden, Romney spar like it's fall 2012 |
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发帖数: 2273 | 1 Biden, Romney spar like it's fall 2012
December 23, 2011
By JIM KUHNHENN and KASIE HUNT
Associated Press
TILTON, N.H. (AP) — It's an opening salvo of the presidential campaign,
minus actual presidential candidates.
Vice President Joe Biden unleashed a biting critique of Mitt Romney's
policies Friday and the Republican came swiftly back at him — a full-
contact preview of what the general election might look like should Romney
win the GOP nomination to challenge President Barack Obama.
All this, before a vote is cast in the Republican race, The Iowa caucuses,
looming Jan. 3, are the first step in the voting to pick a Republican
nominee.
In an opinion piece published in The Des Moines Register, Biden portrayed
the Republican frontrunner as the purveyor of failed, retreaded economic
ideas. Romney shot back that Biden and Obama live an economic "fantasyland"
out of touch with the real world.
Biden's jabs mark a major escalation in Obama's re-election campaign and
refocus his political team on Romney, the former Massachusetts governor whom
Obama advisers have long considered his most likely opponent. And it
switches Obama away from his just-concluded tax cut victory over House
Republicans to the GOP presidential field just 12 days before the Iowa
caucuses.
"Romney appears satisfied to settle for an economy in which fewer people
succeed, while the majority of Americans are left to tread water or fall
behind," Biden wrote.
Biden's words summed up a running story line about Romney that Obama's
campaign and the Democratic Party have been refining for months. The piece
also was a direct rebuttal to Romney's recent claim he wants "an opportunity
society" versus what he called Obama's "entitlement society."
Biden reiterated a major theme of Obama's re-election effort, one the
president spelled out in a recent speech in Kansas where he declared that
the middle class was at a make-or-break moment. In taking on Romney, Biden
defined "opportunity" in his own terms.
"We believe deeply in opportunity — that if you work hard and play by the
rules, no opportunity should be out of reach," he wrote. "This is a
fundamentally different vision than what the other side has proposed."
Romney, speaking at the Tilt'n Diner, quickly countered that it was Obama
who is hurting the country and expressed astonishment that Biden would have
the "chutzpah ... the delusion" to write such a piece.
"This president and his policies have made it harder on the American people
and on the middle class," he said. "And I don't think they get it. I don't
think they understand from fantasyland what's happening in real America.
They need to get out to diners like this."
The timing, placement and direct response to Romney represented a remarkable
early volley from the Obama camp, using the most potent voice next to the
president himself to set a new signpost on the re-election season. And it
signaled an aggressive strategy to challenge his GOP opposition and engage
even though the Republican nomination could remain unsettled for months.
In the opinion piece, Biden said Romney's proposals for the economy "would
actually double down on the policies that caused the greatest economic
calamity since the Great Depression and accelerated a decades-long assault
on the middle class."
"Romney also misleadingly suggests that the president and I are creating an
`Entitlement Society,' whereby government provides everything for its people
without regard to merit, as opposed to what he calls an Opportunity Society
,' where everything is merit-based and every man is left to fend for himself
," Biden wrote.
In essentially placing its bets on Romney, the Obama camp elevated his
stature in the race, particularly in Iowa where he is running neck-and-neck
with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas congressman Ron Paul.
Romney was clearly ready — and eager — to engage with the White House.
While he generally has to be asked, or even pressed, to criticize Gingrich,
he hit back at Biden at the first opportunity.
"I think they realize what's coming," he said. "I hope they're right. I hope
I'm the nominee."
Romney aides said campaign days like this help him against his GOP rivals,
positioning him as the candidate best able to take on Obama in the fall and
addressing a top Republican goal: selecting a nominee that is electable
against the president.
The Obama campaign also chose Iowa to deliver the Biden message because it
is an epicenter of national politics and where it was sure to get intense
attention.
Moreover, Iowa is a general election swing state that Democrat Al Gore won
in 2000 but President George W. Bush won in 2004. Obama beat Republican John
McCain in the state in 2008 by 8 percentage points. Biden's message clearly
aimed for the state's general election voters as well.
Earlier this week, Romney accused Obama of deepening the economic crisis and
backing policies that would redistribute wealth instead of creating equal
opportunity for people to do well.
Romney said his policies would turn the U.S. into an "opportunity society"
while Obama's vision for an "entitlement society" would make more people
dependent on government welfare.
"The only entitlement we believe in is an America where if you work hard,
you can get ahead," Biden wrote in the op-ed.
Biden's piece hinted at another line of attack on Romney — that the former
governor is a man of wealth and privilege. Biden, in his piece, stressed his
own family's working class roots and how his father's pride was "put to the
test when he found himself struggling to make ends meet."
Romney, by contrast, is the son of former American Motors Corp. chairman and
Michigan Gov. George Romney. Romney also made his own fortune as a venture
capitalist, a point Obama's Democratic surrogates have used to portray
Romney as out of touch and elitist.
— — — — —
Hunt reported from New Hampshire; Kuhnhenn reported from Washington. AP
White House Correspondent Ben Feller and AP writer Will Lester contributed
to this report. (Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved
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