In final New Hampshire debate, candidates go after Romney–very briefly

Republican presidential candidates debate in Concord, New Hampshire. (Getty Images)

CONCORD, N.H. -- They had to be poked, prodded and nudged to do it, but the Republican presidential candidates finally went on the offense against front-runner Mitt Romney during a Sunday morning debate--if only for a few minutes.

Going down the line, NBC News moderator David Gregory gave the candidates an opportunity to explain in front of the former Massachusetts governor why they thought Romney should not be the GOP nominee.

"There's a huge difference between a Reagan conservative and somebody who comes out of a Massachusetts culture with an essentially moderate record," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has been on the blunt end of Romney's media attack apparatus for weeks. "I think he'll have a very hard time getting elected."

Visibly frustrated after being slammed by Romney as a "lifetime politician," Gingrich hit back on stage, labeling Romney's claims about being a man of the private sector "pious baloney." (Watch the clip below.)

"You've been running consistently for years and years and years," Gingrich said. "So this idea that suddenly, citizenship showed up in your mind—just level with the American people, you've been running since the 1990s."

The debate began just 10 hours after the ABC/Yahoo! debate ended in Manchester. During that event, candidates largely failed to chip away effectively at Romney's record.

During the "Meet the Press" debate, Romney defended himself as a "solid conservative who brought important change to Massachusetts," and touted his long list of endorsements, including those from several New Hampshire officials. "I'm very proud of the conservative record I have," he said.

That's when Santorum jumped in.

"If his record was so great," he said, turning to Romney, "why didn't you run for re-election?" (Romney served one term as governor of Massachusetts.) Santorum, facing tough re-election odds in 2006, ran anyway and was trounced by double digits. "Why did you bail out?" Santorum said.When asked how conservatives could trust him to promote their agenda, Romney replied: "They've got my record as governor." That answer may come back to haunt him, offering an easy opening for attack over his support for a state-sponsored health care program.

Later in the debate, the focus shifted away from Romney, and moved toward discussions over how the candidates would promote policies that lower heating bills and whether they would champion gay rights. (Watch video of Mitt Romney championing gay rights below.) The banter during this time stayed relatively friendly, but the debate picked up again near the end when  moderators asked about ads run by "super PACs" that support Romney and Gingrich. This election cycle has seen an influx of non-campaign money spent on attack ads that have allowed the campaigns to essentially outsource their mud-slinging to outside groups. When pressed about the content of the ads his Super PAC ran against Gingrich, Romney said that if the ads were wrong or misleading, then they should be taken down.

Interestingly, both candidates said they had not seen the ads produced by the Super PACs that employ many of their former staffers, but then had no trouble listing the specific attacks within them.

"The rhetoric is a little over the top," Romney said of Gingrich's Super PAC ads.

"You think my rhetoric is over the top but your ads are totally reasonable?" Gingrich replied.

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Fact Checking the New Hampshire Debate

Fact Check 1 - Romney created 100,000 jobs at Bain Capital
Fact Check 2 - Santorum’s Ethics Record and Lobbyist Cash
Fact Check 3 – Perry: Defense Cuts will compromise America’s freedoms
Fact Check 4 – Perry: Obama Is Waging War on Religion
Fact Check 5 – Send the troops back to Iraq?
Fact Check 6 – No state is trying to ban contraceptives?
Fact Check 7 – Utah was the No. 1 job creating state when Huntsman was governor
Fact Check 8 – Government regulations keep America’s manufacturing sector from being competitive
Fact Check 9 – Obama called the Iranian election “legitimate”
Fact Check 10 – When Is the BCS Football Championship Game?

Fact or Fiction Number 1 - Mitt Romney created 100,000 jobs while heading Bain Capital

ABC News’s Matt Negrin reports:

Newt Gingrich raced out of the gate in tonight’s debate by being skeptical of Mitt Romney’s claim that Bain was responsible for creating 100,000 jobs, and he pointed to scrutiny of the firm in a recent New York Times article and a documentary.

In response, Romney repeated a familiar talking point – that Bain, under his leadership, was responsible for creating 100,000 jobs at companies in which it invested. Romney was asked tonight if the 100,000 jobs are discounting the number of jobs that were lost at companies backed by Bain. He said the figure includes “both” and that it’s a “net” tally. He rattled off some talking points on companies that added jobs, like Sports Authority and Staples.

Bain was not the sole investor in Staples (which Romney said added 90,000 jobs) nor Sports Authority (which he said added 15,000). In 2002, for example, Staples founder Tom Stemberg wrote on CNN Money that Bain “gave us a boost.” Though the company also had help from two other firms. Sports Authority, too, was started with financial help from a few other investors.

Democrats were quick to respond to Romney’s claim tonight. In an email to reporters, the party pointed to a number of quotes the candidate has made years ago about that figure — including this part from a 1994 Boston Globe article: ”In a telephone interview late yesterday, Romney dismissed the characterization of Staples and his other investments as streamlining, saying that what he has done is ‘build and grow businesses,’ not shrink them. He asserted that there is no way to calculate whether jobs have been lost or gained economy-wide as a result of his ventures, and noted his 10,000-job figure simply measures what happened to employment at companies in which Bain invested.”

FactCheck.org checked Romney’s 100,000 jobs claim earlier this week and found it to be “unproven and questionable.”

Rick Santorum, standing to Romney’s left on the stage, was asked early in the debate whether his comment that the United States doesn’t need a CEO (it needs a leader) was directed at Romney; he confirmed that, yes, it was.

Fact or Fiction Number 2 -  Santorum was called “corrupt” and took the most lobbyist cash of any lawmaker in Washington

ABC News’ Chris Good reports:

During the debate, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum sparred over Santorum’s ethics record. Who characterized it more accurately?

Moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Ron Paul about this ad, which the Texas congressman’s campaign will begin airing in South Carolina on Monday:

The ad accuses Santorum of corruption and states that he took the most money from lobbyists of any member of Congress, during his time in Washington.

Paul stood by the ad tonight, noting that the “corruption” allegation originally came from an independent group. Santorum protested that the group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), had leveled “ridiculous” charges against him and that CREW disproportionately makes such charges against conservatives.

Both are (mostly) right.

On the topic of lobbyist cash: Santorum did receive the most contributions from lobbyists and lobbying groups in the 2006 election cycle, when he lost to Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Santorum’s objection—that the total was based on PAC donations—is partly true. Center for Responsive Politics counts both PAC and individual (over $200) donations, according to its listed methodology.

On the topic of corruption, CREW did file a complaint against Santorum, and it did list Santorum on its “most corrupt” members of Congress list in 2006. But the complaint was never taken up by the Senate Ethics Committee and Santorum lost his reelection campaign, as noted in this ABC News story. CREW’s complaint alleged that a loan violated the Senate gift rule and that Santorum appeared to have traded legislative action for donations. Santorum did write a letter to Pennsylvania newspaper protesting the allegations.

As for CREW’s partisanship: Santorum is probably right about CREW’s reputation among Republicans, but the group focuses its criticism on both parties. Its current “most corrupt” list includes 10 Republicans and four Democrats.

When Santorum made the list, in an election cycle marked by GOP ethics scandals, the list included 21 Republicans and four Democrats.

Fact or Fiction Number 3 - Perry: Defense Cuts will compromise America’s freedoms

ABC News’ Elizabeth Hartfield reports:

“You can’t cut $1 trillion from DOD and expect America’s freedoms aren’t going to be compromised.”

That was the claim stated by Texas Governor Rick Perry in response to a question from WMUR’s political director Josh McElveen about the role of President as a commander-in-chief. The claim, was in reference to Obama’s shrinking of the military, as outlined to the Pentagon earlier this week.

The $1 trillion number reference by Perry was likely a referral to the $1.3 trillion  in total federal budget cuts, scheduled to start in January, 2013 (after this election wraps.)

As part of that $1 trillion plus, the Pentagon will face at least $487 billion in spending cuts over the course of the next 10 years.

Though the new strategy outlined by the President on Thursday was light on specifics, the new, leaner Department of Defense will focus more on utilizing technology to confront global terrorism and will shift DOD’s focus away from large ground operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more towards operations in the Pacific.

Many military officials have been skeptical about these cuts, but Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey offered his support of the plan on Thursday.

“There will be people who think it goes too far. Others will say it doesn’t go nearly far enough” the general said. “That probably makes it about right. It gives us what we need.”

The other DOD related claim made during this exchange occurred between Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, when Paul criticized Gingrich for not serving in Vietnam. Gingrich claimed he was not eligible for the draft. During the years of the Vietnam war Gingrich was a student, earning his M.A. followed by his Ph.D in modern European history in 1971.

Under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 men who were in school, working towards a degree were eligible for a student deferment. Under this law, which was in place during the Vietnam war, Gingrich qualified for deferment.

Fact or Fiction Number 4 - Perry: Obama Is Waging War on Religion

Rick Perry accused President Obama of battling religion — Catholicism in particular — in tonight’s debate, saying those battles would “stop” if the Texas governor is elected president.

In particular, Perry cited the Obama administration’s decision in September to deny funding to Catholic charities for victims of sex trafficking. Perry opined that Obama did so because he disagrees with Catholics over abortion.

The Christian Post wrote that the Obama administration made the decision “because it does not provide clients with access to abortion and birth control services.”

“This administration’s war on religion is what bothers me greatly,” Perry said at the debate.

Perry’s rhetoric might be an exaggeration, though it’s certainly reminiscent of an ad he released in which he said: “You don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school. As president, I’ll end Obama’s war on religion.”

Most respondents in a poll by Yahoo! don’t agree with Perry’s assessment of the White House’s stance on religion. Out of nearly 20,000 votes in a real-time poll conducted by Yahoo.com during the debate, 58 percent of voters said they didn’t agree with the Texas governor.

Fact or Fiction Number 5 - U.S. could send troops back into Iraq, civil war is around the corner in Afghanistan

ABC News’ Chris Good reports:

Rick Perry floated a new idea in tonight’s debate: Sending troops back into Iraq.

“I would send troops back into Iraq because I will tell you, I think we start talking with the Iraqi individuals there,” Perry said. “The idea that we allow the Iranians to come back into Iraq and take over that country with all of the treasure both in blood and money that we have spent in Iraq because this president wants to kowtow to this liberal leftist base and move out those men and women.”

Republicans like Mitt Romney cautioned, as the last U.S. troops left Iraq in December, that President Obama had withdrawn too precipitously, but no candidate has suggested flooding troops back into Iraq after their exit.

The question about Perry’s comment: If the U.S. wanted to send troops back to Iraq, could it?

The answer: probably not. While a U.S. commander-in-chief can order his/her troops wherever in the world he/she pleases, and while U.S. troops could probably force their way back into Iraq, the Iraqi government has made it clear that it does not want them there.

U.S. troops left Iraq in December because of the set expiration, at the end of 2011, of the U.S.-Iraqi “Status of Forces Agreement” to keep them there. The Obama administration had engaged in talks with Iraq to keep some U.S. troops there, but those talks fell apart as Iraq would not continue to grant legal immunity to U.S. troops within its borders, as ABC’s Jake Tapper reported in October. Since the exit of U.S. troops, Iraq has seen a wave of violence.

Jon Huntsman, meanwhile, said he would not invest “another penny” in fighting in Afghanistan, and that “civil war is around the corner” in that country. It’s worth noting the state of affairs between the U.S., the Afghan government, and the Taliban. U.S. negotiations with the Taliban have the support of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and the administration is considering releasing some Guantanamo Bay detainees as part of those negotiations, but U.S. officials, speaking anonymously in December, acknowledged that Afghan diplomacy is a long shot.

Fact or Fiction Number 6 - No states are trying to ban contraceptives

ABC News’ Greg Krieg reports:

Mitt Romney thinks contraception is “working just fine.”

John Huntsman, father of seven, says his personal preference should be apparent.

Rick Santorum has a more nuanced view on the use, and right to use, condoms and birth control. His logic, simply stated, is that even though he considers the use of contraceptives immoral, he doesn’t think it should be illegal.

“The states have a right to do a lot of things. That doesn’t mean they should do it, ” Santorum told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. “Someone asked me if the states have the right to do it? Yes. They have the right to do it, they shouldn’t do it.”

Simple, right? Not exactly. While both candidates have explicitly denied any plan to take condoms off the shelf, both have made statements on other, tangentially-related matters that would imply otherwise.

Romney backed Mississippi’s ultimately failed (it was voted down in a referendum) Personhood Amendment, which if passed would have defined life as having begun at the point of conception. Such language “could potentially ban common forms of contraception like the birth control pill, as well as prevent a pregnant woman experiencing complications that threaten her life or health to obtain safe abortion care,” Molly A.K. Connors wrote in New Hampshire’s Concord Monitor.

For his part, Santorum has often spoken out against the Supreme Court’s ruling in Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965). That decision, which stated that the constitution protected “the right to privacy,” was inspired by an ultimately overturned state ban on contraception.

Santorum and many anti-Abortionists feel that the ruling paved the way for Roe v. Wade.
The Griswold case, he said yesterday, “created a new Constitutional right, which in my opinion is judicial activism.”

So while it would be unfair to say Santorum wants to ban contraception, he has been a vocal opponent of the most prominent court ruling its favor.

Fact or Fiction Number 7 - Utah was the No. 1 job creating state when Huntsman was governor

FactCheck.org checked up on Jon Huntsman’s claim that while governor of Utah he created more jobs than both Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. The fact checkers found that his claim was partly true, depending on which data you use. Utah’s job growth was definitely above the national average under Huntsman’s term, but using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Texas’ job growth ranked higher.

Check out all the details from FactCheck.org here.

Fact or Fiction Number 8 – Government regulations are the biggest barrier to making America’s manufacturing sector competitive

ABC News’ Elizabeth Hartfield reports:
Former Senator Rick Santorum, who frequently cites his roots as the grandson of a coal-miner, asserted that America’s manufacturing sector has been devastated in recent years because we are uncompetitive in a global economy.

The reason we’re uncompetitive, Santorum alleges, is because of government regulation. Santorum claims that the U.S. corporate tax rate- 35 percent- is the highest in the world.

That fact is actually incorrect- the U.S. tax rate is the second highest in the world, Japan is the highest at 39.5 percent. Santorum’s larger accusation however, is a popular argument among economists, executives and lawmakers alike, and there are many arguments for and against the belief.

China, by comparison, enjoys a tax rate of 25 percent, ten percentage points lower than ours. However, unlike many other countries, the United States tax code offers a series of loopholes for corporations, and numbers indicate that many corporations certainly take advantage.

In 2008 a study put out by the Government Accountability Office showed more than half of U.S. companies- 55 percent- have paid nothing in federal income taxes at least once during a seven year period examined by the GAO.

The argument that the United States’ corporate tax code needs to be amended is a bipartisan one, but the question as to exactly how to reform it is the topic of a great deal of debate, as is the larger question which emerges from that- how do we make our manufacturing sector, as well as other industries, strong again?

Fact or Fiction Number 9 - President Obama said the Iranian election was “legitimate”

Rick Santorum said at tonight’s debate that President Obama “tacitly supported” the 2009 re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and called the elections “legitimate.”

FactCheck.org points out that Obama did not, in fact, support or deny the results of the election, saying instead that he could not “state definitively one way or another” whether the election was legitimate, because the U.S. did not have election monitors in Iran.

Fact or Fiction Number 10 - If they weren’t debating, candidates would be at home watching an NCAA football (or basketball) championship

ABC News’ Greg Krieg’s Instant Fact Check: There is no college football championship game being played tonight. There is an NFL playoff game. But no college ball.

ABC News’ Chris Good reports:

America loves sports, and for a politicians, fanship is a good way to prove you’re just one of the guys or gals. Most of the time.

Asked by moderator George Stephanopoulos what they’d be doing on Saturday night if they weren’t debating, three candidates said they’d be at home watching a national-championship college sports game.

Unfortunately, no such game was being played. Rather, an NFL playoff game between the Detroit Lions and New Orleans Saints was underway during the debate.

“Watching the national-championship college basketball game,” Newt Gingrich said in response to  Stephanopoulos’s final debate question. “Football,” he adjusted, when corrected on the sport.

Santorum agreed: He’d be at home watching the national-championship NCAA football game.

“It’s football,” Mitt Romney said, also agreeing. “I love it.”

False: It’s neither. Badly as they may have wanted to, no candidate could have been watching a football or basketball championship game tonight.

Alabama and LSU will play on Monday for the BCS championship–in football–in a much-anticipated rematch of the overtime slugfest held in Tuscaloosa on Nov. 6, which LSU won 9-6.

Note to Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney: The game will be broadcast at 8:30 p.m. ET on ESPN. Monday.

Fact Check compiled by ABC News’ Amy Bingham.

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Republican Candidates Ready to Rumble in Key New Hampshire Debate

CHICAGO - With the race for the Republican presidential nomination at its most critical moment to date, only days before the crucial New Hampshire primary, the six candidates will square off Saturday night in Manchester at an ABC News/Yahoo! News/WMUR debate that has the potential to be the most explosive one yet.

The debate, the only broadcast network debate in prime-time before the primary, will air from 9-11 p.m. ET from Saint Anselm College, where it will be moderated by ABC News' Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos, as well as WMUR-TV anchor Josh McElveen.

For every candidate, there is a lot at stake.

Fresh off his narrow eight-vote victory in the Iowa caucuses, Mitt Romney is the favorite to win the nation's first primary on Tuesday. A resounding win in New Hampshire would leave Romney poised to run away with his party's nomination with the primary season only just begun. The former Massachusetts governor has held massive leads in New Hampshire polls throughout the past six months, and he also sits atop the polls in South Carolina, where the race heads next. Convincing wins in both states would make Romney almost unstoppable before the race has even hit Florida in late January.

That only increases the odds that Romney will face a slew of attacks from his rivals at the debate.

Rick Santorum, riding a wave of momentum after his virtual tie with Romney in Iowa, comes into the debate with much to prove. The former Pennsylvania senator was almost an afterthought for much of last year, buried in the polls, but he surged to the forefront in Iowa.

Now the question is whether or not Santorum can survive in the spotlight and avoid the same fates that have befallen the other candidates who have attempted to emerge as the chief alternative to Romney. Just ask Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich. All three enjoyed stints atop the polls only to then plunge back into the pack.

With a bare-bones campaign organization and a meager war chest, the little-known Santorum is out to prove that he has staying power. In Iowa, Santorum rode a wave of social conservative support, but those voters are in comparatively short supply in New Hampshire. Expect Santorum at the debate to try to draw clear contrasts with Romney, such as emphasizing his blue-collar roots.

Santorum this week has already struggled to duplicate his Iowa magic in New Hampshire. He gave long-winded answers at numerous campaign stops and on Thursday came in for a frosty reception from a college crowd. At an event with students in Concord, Santorum was even booed after denouncing same-sex marriage, which is legal in New Hampshire.

"[For] 230 years marriage has been between one man and woman. So if you want to change the law … you have to make the positive argument about why," he said, prompting several members of the audience to voice their disagreement with his stance.

If Santorum is eager to go toe to toe with Romney, then Gingrich is positively chomping at the bit. After Romney's political action committee blasted Gingrich, an attack that played a part in Gingrich's recent slump, the former House speaker is now prepared to take off the gloves and duke it out with Romney, a change of strategy after his initial promise to run a positive campaign. However, Gingrich must strike a delicate balance in Manchester if he is to succeed: go on the offensive against Romney without appearing angry and frustrated. In an interview Friday with George Stephanopoulos on "Good Morning America," Gingrich sought to cast himself as a Reagan conservative while dubbing Romney Moderate Mitt, a line that he repeated later in the day at a campaign stop in the Granite State.

"There's a point when you just have to say to somebody - get real. He's a Massachusetts moderate," Gingrich said in Newport, N.H.

Ron Paul, who came in third in Iowa, has proven that he can get under the skin of Gingrich and Santorum. The Texas congressman is not one to shy away from debate duels. At the last Republican debate in Sioux City, Iowa, he went back and forth with Michele Bachmann in a heated exchange. Now Bachmann is out of the race, leaving Paul free to set his sights on other rivals. With consistent support in most New Hampshire polls, Paul may also feel emboldened to deliver an aggressive performance in Manchester.

While there is a lot on the line for Paul, Gingrich, Santorum and Romney, perhaps no candidates need a good debate more than Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman. The former left Iowa with his campaign in tatters after a disappointing fifth-place finish. Perry said he wanted to return to Austin, Texas, to take time to reassess his struggling campaign, leading many observers to expect him to drop out altogether. But a mere 12 hours later, Perry had settled on soldiering on in the GOP contest, with his sights set firmly on a good finish in South Carolina. Despite his focus on the Palmetto State, Perry desperately needs to put in a strong showing in Manchester to jumpstart his campaign.

Huntsman comes into the debate with the same goal but with a completely different focus: He has staked his entire campaign on New Hampshire. Huntsman's decision not to make a push for Iowa or South Carolina leaves him in dire need of a victory in New Hampshire, something that looks unlikely with his weak poll numbers, despite an endorsement by the Boston Globe. His tenuous position, combined with his tendency to take on Romney at every turn, makes a fiery performance from Huntsman in Manchester nearly a guarantee.

With so many candidates in such desperate positions, it is a safe bet to expect fireworks at the debate, especially involving Romney - the frontrunner is likely to bear the brunt of the attacks in Manchester. How successful the attacks are - and how well Romney responds to them - could go a long way toward determining the fate of the GOP race.

Matthew Jaffe is covering the 2012 campaign for ABC News and Univision.

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Romney turns up the heat on Obama in New Hampshire

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney unveiled his first television ad of the election cyle this week in New Hampshire, kicking off a major media push in the state.

The 60-second spot ignores Romney's Republican primary opponents and strikes directly against President Obama, who is scheduled to visit Manchester Tuesday.

Democrats on Tuesday took issue with the part of the ad that quotes Obama saying, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose," pointing out that Romney took the quote out of context. Obama used the line in 2008, but he was talking about his opponent, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, not his own campaign. What Obama did say at the time, was this: "Senator McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote, 'If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.'" In response, the Democratic National Committee slammed Romney, calling him "a serial deceiver."

Apart from the video, Romney also penned a two-page open letter to the president, which three of the state's largest newspapers will publish this week.

"I will be blunt. Your policies have failed," Romney writes. "It is bad enough that they have fallen short even by the standards your own administration set for itself. But things are much worse than that. Far from bringing the crisis to an end, your policies have actively hindered economic recovery. In some cases, they were the exact opposite of what our government should have been doing."

"It is not America's laziness that is the problem, as you recently suggested," Romney goes on to say. "It is your policies."

As the former governor of a neighboring state and a Granite State property owner, Romney--should he become the GOP nominee--would presumably enjoy something of a home-field advantage against Obama in New Hampshire, who won the state against Republican presidential candidate John McCain by nearly 10 percentage points in 2008.

You can read the full letter after the jump.

Dear President Obama,

Welcome to New Hampshire.

I hope you enjoy your visit. In 49 days, voters here will be going to the polls to choose a Republican nominee to run against you. I would like to lay out for you some of what I will be saying on the campaign trail if I am fortunate enough to become my party's candidate.

I would begin by acknowledging that you were dealt a hard hand. You came into office in the midst of an economic crisis that was not of your making. You were asked to face great challenges and to solve difficult problems. The tasks before you would have taxed the abilities of any new president.

But we now have had three years to watch your policies unfold and to assess their results. The evidence is in and it is unequivocal. I will be blunt. Your policies have failed. It is bad enough that they have fallen short even by the standards your own administration set for itself. But things are much worse than that. Far from bringing the crisis to an end, your policies have actively hindered economic recovery. In some cases, they were the exact opposite of what our government should have been doing.

You and your advisors sold your economic "stimulus" package to Congress on the basis of a forecast that it would hold unemployment below 8 percent. There is a reason why this projection was wildly off base and that unemployment soared above 10 percent and is now stuck around 9 percent. Your stimulus bill was filled with special interest giveaways, and eased the way for your administration to shovel loan guarantees out the door to politically connected "green" technology firms, some of which are now in bankruptcy, with the taxpayers on the hook for more than $500 million.

Even where crony capitalism did not get in the way, so many projects were far from "shovel ready" or had absolutely nothing to do with creating jobs. Nearly a trillion dollars of tax dollars was spent, our budget deficit exploded, and some 25 million Americans remain either unemployed, underemployed, or have given up seeking work altogether. You placed a burden of debt on America that will take generations to repay and we got almost nothing in return.

You also failed to grasp the impact of your policies on the American business climate. Investment depends upon a degree of certainty, but your administration made it impossible for enterprises to make accurate forecasts about their future costs. If companies have stopped hiring in America, it is in no small part because of policies, including Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and an astonishing tangle of new federal regulations that have snuffed out investment. If we are ever to get America back to work, they all must be repealed.

I will also be talking about how you have catered to favored special interests, like civil-service unions and environmentalists, at the expense of American workers. Take your decision to "delay" building the state-of-the-art Keystone XL oil pipeline. Some 20,000 American jobs are at stake. You may not regard that as a large number, but every one of the unemployed men and women whose future you have sacrificed to satisfy your political base in the environmentalist left deserve far better. And this is but one of many examples I can cite.

America deserves better.

It is not America's laziness that is the problem, as you recently suggested. It is your policies.

So once again, Mr. President, welcome to New Hampshire. We need a great debate about how best to get our country working again. We can't afford four more years of failure. I believe in unleashing America's potential. That is what my own campaign for the presidency is all about.

Sincerely,

Mitt Romney

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