Summary

IN INTERPLAY: N1 BOOTH CAMPAIGN 2012 MITT ROMNEY JACKSONVILLE FL 013012 08:45:28: BROLL ROMNEY ENTERS CROWD, GLADHANDS, MAKES HIS WAY TO PODIUM WHILE 'BORN FREE' PLAYS 08:46:30: Senator, thank you And Congressman, I appreciate your welcome here, what a great morning in Jacksonville Thank you (CHEERS) Wow, this has been fun these last 10 days or so in Florda, I've gotta tell ya, it's been great going across the state and meeting people in this wonderful state again It's been fun going to the debates, I've loved the debates! (CHEERS) 08:46:55: It's, you know these debates have gone pretty well Speaker Gingrich wasn't very happy with the debates though, (B00S) he said after the first debate he didn't do well because the crowd was so quiet, it threw him off The second debate he said he didn't do well because he crowd was so loud, you know so, I think the real reason he hasn't done so well connecting with the people of Florida is that people actually saw him in those debates and listened to his background, his experience, and they learned for instance, that he was paid 16 million dollars to be a lobbyist for Freddie Mac and they said 'that's not what we want in the White House' (CHEERS) 08:47:38: I uh - what was that back there? (INAUDIBLE RESPONSE FROM MAN IN CROWD) send him to the moon huh? Well(LAUGHTER) The idea of the Moon as the 51st state is not what would have come to my mind as a campaign basis here in Florida You know, this has been an exciting time and I think it's going to be a historic election I know that right now a lot of people in this country are hurting And right here in Florida are hurting How many people here either personally or in their family or know someone whose been hurt by the housing crisis? (CROWD RAISES HANDS) Wow This is what I see all over the state and people recognize that the policies that got us into this mess included the fact that we had something called Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and they were guaranteeing mortgages when they knew people couldn't possibly pay them back, that led to prices going through the roof, a huge bubble erupted, people got hurt by it and the idea that someone running for President was getting paid by Freddie Mac at the time that was going on, 16 million dollars that just hurts people, and I think that's the real reason Speaker Gingrich has had such a hard time 08:48:50: I also think people realize that if they want to see change in Washington, you can't just elect the same poeple to take different chairs (CHEERS) You have to elect new people to come in and take over And so I think this is a question about the course of America You have a President that has a very different view of what America ought to look like over the coming century than what I have His view, in my opinion, begins with debt and massive spending He is willing to spend a trillion dollars more every year than this country takes in It is an unfathomable number We're on track to become like Greece, sometime in the next 5 years or so Our debt, total debt, as a percentage of the entire economy, the GDP is about 80% now By the end of his first term - and his only term by the way (CHEERS) - that will go from roughly 80% to roughly 90% of the GDP We're now getting to a point, where at some point people around the world are going to say they're going to stop loaning money to America if we don't pay them a lot more interest And if that happens, we could totally crush our economy And so I'm not one of those that says 'let's keep spending and borrowing', my view is that we've got cut federal spending, we've got to cap it, and we've got to finally balance the budget, and I'll do that job (CHEERS) 08:50:19: We have a President who looks at healthcare and says the government knows better than free people how to manage their own health care and so he crafts something known as Obamacare to guide our future in health care (BOOS) If I'm President, I will repeal Obamacare (CHEERS) And return to the Obamacare, the authority and responsibilty for their own health care 08:50:45: And then you have a President, well he practices something I call 'crony capitalism' And it's kind of capitalism but instead of it being driven by the market and consumers, it's driven by politicians And in this case, you watch what he's done For instance, he wanted solar energy so he picks the company that he thinks will be successful with solar energy, and gives them 500 million dollars Now, if you've never been involved in the start-up of a business, you may not understand just how extraordinary that is When we started Staples, the office superstore, we collected 5 or 10 million dollars to get that started And if it worked well, we would keep on adding to it and adding to it to build it But he put 500 million dollars in At our Staples headquarters, we had old second-hand furniture, the board chairs that we sat in were Norgahide (?) chairs - you sunk so deeply in them, they were these used things, you had to be athletic to get out of them Our headquarters was in the back of an old shopping mall Solindra headquarters was this huge Taj Mahal-like building: big glass walls with all these big executives looking out over the countryside That's what happens when government practices capitalism Oh and by the way, you know Solinda's bankrupt - Staples has 90,000 employees (CHEERS) 08:52:15: Crony capitalism also led to something called Enter 1 which is a battery company, they put 100 million dollars into that, that's also bankrupt And then they gave General Motors to the UAW because the UAW supported Barack Obama and then they appointed labor stooges to be on the board of the National Labor Relations Board And they in turn said that South Carolina couldn't have a Boeing factory because it's a right to work state This is crony capitalism, it's wrong, I will restore free market enterprise to our markets in America (CHEERS) 08:52:55: I think our President believes that the other nations of the world are getting stronger and stronger and that we should have to accomodate a world where America is no longer the undisputed heavyweight on the planet You'll recall in his campaign promises of 3 years ago he said he was going to meet with Castro and Ahmendinijad and Kim Jong-Il at the time and some of the world's worst actors and that didn't work out so well They weren't interested in meeting anyway I actually think that in some cases he's treated our enemies more favorably than he's treated our friends 08:53:35: My view is: American strength is essential to the world, essential for us, and we should stand by our allies and our friends like Israel and all the other nations that have been with us Committing our futures together (CHEERS) 08:53:50: This President would take us down a path, he would take us down a path that would weaken our military He just announced, just a few days ago, that he will cut military spending by almost a half a trillion dollars over this decade and let me put that in context, do you realize that our Navy is already smaller than at any time since 1917? And that our Air Force is older and smaller than any time since it's founding in 1947? And of course our active-duty personnel have been pulled back and forth to multiple rotations to Iraq and now to Afghanistan, stretched to the breaking point And yet even in that circumstance he wants to cut military spending and cut our military capability Ever since FDR we have had as a national policy enough military strength to fight two wars at once Not that we want to, but we want to have such strength that no one would ever think of testing us This President, first since FDR, has said 'no, we're going to go down to only fight one war at a time' Now is this because the world has become safer? (SHOUTS OF 'NO') No - of course not Whether it's the change in leadership in North Korea Whether it's China insisting that they have control and ownership of the South Chinese sea, where by the way almost half of the world's trade travels Or whether it's what's happening in Pakistan or the Arab Spring or Iran about to become nuclear - the world is not safer And yet the President is cutting back on our military capacity 03:55:27: My view is, don't take that course Instead increase our ship building from 9 to 15 a year, have 11 aircraft carrier battle groups, as we have had in the past, make sure that we modernize our (VIDEO CUTS OUT AT 08:55:40) (VIDEO BEGINS AGAIN AT 09:05:45) Airforce - add 100,000 troops to our active personnel and finally give the Veterans in this country the care that they deserve (CHEERS) 09:06:20: I believe in a strong Ameican military and I believe that American strength is the best source of peace for us and for the planet I believe in American strength, American resolve, I believe in standing with our allies, and I believe that we must return to the principles that made America strong if we're going to get people back to work, get people in homes with rising incomes again, that's not to have the government run our country but instead have free people choosing their path in life, keeping America strong and great (CHEERS) 09:07:00: You know, the President says that he wants to fundamentally transform America I don't want to transform America into something I wouldn't recognize, I want to restore to America the principles that made us the hope of the Earth and those principles include those that were written in the Declaration of Independence where the founders said that we were endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness We would be free in this country to pursue happiness as we choose, not based upon the circumstance of our birth or the place of our birth, not based upon the will of government but instead based upon the will of individual citizens And so we, by virtue or our hard work, our risk-taking, our education, maybe a little good luck and our dreams, could choose our path in life And fortunately some people were so extraordinarily successful, they helped lift our economy and made us all better off, that's been the nature of America's story I don't want to change that into something else, which is more like an entitlement state The way that President Obama is taking us, a European-style social welfare state where government sees its job as taking from some people to give to others That's the wrong course for America, I want to keep America a place of opportunity where people pursue their dreams (CHEERS) 09:08:35: I love the hymns of America, I love our national anthem, I love the fact that we're the only people on Earth who place our hand over our heart during the playing of the National Anthem I also love a song known as America the beautiful O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain's majesty across the fruited plain My parents took me on a trip when I was a kid, more than one trip We were raised in Michigan, it's a beautiful state with the Great Lakes, but they wanted us to see Cypress Gardens here and go across the American West and see the canyones and the mountains and the oceans and the sequoias and so forth, I fell in love with the land of America just as a young boy my parents drove me around in their Rambler (LAUGHTER) 09:09:25: It's a miracle it made it, you know that? (LAUGHTER) There's another verse I love which describes another reason why I have a passion for this country: o beautiful for heroes, proved in liberating strife, who more themself their country loved, and mercy more than life All thsoe who are Veterans or members of the Armed Services please raise your hand - (MANY RAISE HANDS) Wow - thank you, thank you, thank you Sir, thanks Ma'am, Sir, thank you 09:10:04: What a people, and there's one more verse that sometimes doesn't get mentioned too often: 'O beautiful for Patriot dream, that sees beyond the years' The founders, in writing the Declaration of Independence, and crafting the Constitution, established documents that were not just for their time but saw beyond the years - even to ours and beyond I believe that with all the challenges that we face right now, the course for America should not be to look abroad for new ideas, our friends the Wall Street occupiers who want to change America somehow and find a different system, that's not the source of American greatness The right course for America is to restore the principles that made us the hope of the earth, to turn back to our respect for life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness I would restore those principles in America I will use all of my energy and passion to keep America strong, to stand with our friends, to restore values to our families, to assure that people have great education, great skills, and the opportunity to fulfill their dreams I love this country for what it is, for the people who are here, for its rocks and rills (?) and templed hills - I love America And I will keep America the hope of the earth, the strength of the earth, and a great salvation to many people who want to find freedom - this is the land, this is the place which is an exceptional land, we're not just another place with a flag, we're a place where freedom rings, I will keep it strong, I will keep America strong, get us back to work, and keep us the 'shining city on the hill' Thank guys (CHEERS) Great to see you!