The Detroit News on Thursday politely thanked President Barack Obama for bailing out the auto industry before throwing its official endorsement to Mitt Romney citing its hope the Republican will restore “faith in the core principles of free men and women, free minds and free markets that made America great, and will keep it so.”
The editorial said Michigan is better off because of the taxpayer bailout, but in a stinging rebuke added that “had Obama done as well with the rest of the economy, it would be hard to deny him a second term.”
“But Obama said himself in a midterm television interview that if by the end of his first term the economy was still broken, he should not be re-elected. Well, the economy is still broken, and we have lost confidence in the president’s ability to make the necessary repairs,” the editorial said.
Obama sought to woo Michigan voters during this week’s final debate on foreign affairs, going off-topic from China as a currency manipulator to the bailout – a favorite bragging point in his stump speeches.
“If we had taken your advice Gov. Romney about our auto industry, we’d be buying cars from China instead of selling cars to China,” Obama said.
The editorial said Romney was “wrong-headed” on how the near-collapse should have been handled, but said he “understands the industry, and will shield it from regulators who never tire of churning out new layers of mandates. It is important to remember that the automobile industry is never truly ‘saved;’ there are always new challenges.”
“As we said, this is more than a choice between two individuals. America is locked in a struggle over what it will be as a mature nation.”
“A country built on rugged individualism finds itself increasingly under the thumb of a federal government that is ever expanding its reach into the lives of its citizens,” the editorial said. “Obama has proved himself a disciple of the doctrine that for every problem there’s a government solution. Romney, by contrast, embraces individual initiative and entrepreneurship. He would turn back the encroachment of the bureaucracy into the private sector.”
“Romney would replace the heavy hand of government with the invisible hand of a rational marketplace working to produce broad prosperity,” the editorial said.
Also this week Romney scored endorsements from the New York Post and Washington Examiner. Meanwhile, the Washington Post has endorsed Obama.
The New York tabloid criticized the president’s economic record and foreign policy, despite Obama’s pledge to “restore America’s standing in the world.”
“But he has sown rancor and confusion instead,” the New York Post said. “Our friends don’t know if they’re still our friends; our enemies wonder whether we have the courage to stand up to them.”
The Examiner said that under Obama’s presidency, entrepreneurs are paralyzed by uncertainty, capital investments sidelined, and 23 million Americans are out of work.
“The American economy is treading water in the short term and threatened by a crushing debt burden in the long term. To fix this mess, and to bring back what most Americans consider economic normalcy, we urge our readers to vote for Mitt Romney on Nov. 6,” the Examiner said.
However, the Washington Post says that only Obama has the right approach to strengthening the economy, which they say is “a balance of entitlement reform and revenue increases.”
“Mr. Romney, by contrast, has embraced his party’s reality-defying ideology that taxes can always go down but may never go up,” the Washington Post said.
