Obama Says Romney Would Bring a ‘Losing Season’ - News
President Barack Obama warned union workers in football-crazy Ohio on Monday that Republican Mitt Romney would guide the nation to a ”losing season,” imploring voters in the battleground state to take his opponent’s plan and ”punt it away.”
Ahead of a trip to Louisiana to view flood damage from Hurricane Isaac, Obama marked Labor Day by using a series of sports analogies to dismiss Romney, who told voters in Iowa last weekend that it was ”time to get a new coach. It’s time for America to see a winning season again, and we’re going to bring it to them.”
”I’ve got one piece of advice for you about the Romney-Ryan game plan: Punt it away. It won’t work. It won’t win the game,” Obama said in Toledo. ”You don’t need that coach. That’s a losing season.”
Obama was mixing politics and presidential empathy on a holiday traditionally known as an election-year turning point, with summer closing and more voters paying attention to the race for the White House. The president was trying to win over voters in Ohio, one of the seven most contested states likely to decide the Nov. 6 election.
Speaking to members of the United Auto Workers and United Steelworkers, Obama noted his decision to rescue automakers General Motors and Chrysler in 2009, a move that Romney opposed.
”If America had thrown in the towel like that, GM and Chrysler wouldn’t exist today,” Obama said. ”The suppliers and the distributors that get their business from these companies would have died off too. Then even Ford could have gone down as well.”
The recoveries of GM and Chrysler have been recurrent themes in Obama’s re-election campaign, particularly in states such as Michigan and the battleground of Ohio.