The Mitt Romney campaign released these excerpts of Romney’s speech kicking of his bus tour across the country Friday:
Everywhere I go, I meet people who represent the best of America. They are hopeful, hard-working, determined and proud. But they are also worried and anxious. They are tired of being tired.
And they are tired of a detached and distant President who never seems to hear their voices.
When Americans rose up and demanded, “Stop borrowing money and sticking our kids with the bill,” the President wasn’t listening. He was on the line with China, taking out another loan.
When Americans went to town halls and said, “We don’t want Obamacare,” the President ignored us, and spent fifteen months ramming his health-care bill through Congress on a party-line vote.
And when we asked, “Where is the recovery we were promised?” this President lectured us saying “The private sector is doing fine.”
For so many Americans the distance between their town and the City of Washington has never seemed so far. The federal establishment has never seemed so hostile or remote – so disconnected from economic reality, and yet so willing to use restrictions and regulations, taxes and fines, commissions and czars to direct our daily lives.
The President’s plans have Americans wondering whether our future can be as bright as our past. But that lack of faith in our future is a bridge to despair that we cannot cross.
That’s why, from now until November, our campaign will carry a simple message: America’s greatest days are ahead!
Washington’s big government agenda should not smother small-town dreams. In the America we love, every town counts. Every job counts. And every American counts!
…
Yesterday the President gave a speech. A Very. Long. Speech.
You might have thought that it would be a moment when he would acknowledge his policy mistakes and suggest a new course. But no. He promised four more years, of more of the same. Four. More. Very. Long. Years. …
… Somewhere in that long speech, President Obama spoke of giving people a “fair shot.” I couldn’t agree more.
President Obama isn’t giving our students a fair shot when they graduate and only half of them can find jobs or work that matches their skills.
And he isn’t giving the middle class a fair shot when wages keep going down and prices keep going up. Under Barack Obama, more Americans are living in poverty than under any President in history. That’s a tragedy, not a fair shot!
He didn’t give the children of Washington, DC a fair shot when he proposed to end their scholarships to go to better schools.
And when he bows to the demands of the teacher’s unions, he isn’t giving a fair shot to kids across America.
He isn’t giving entrepreneurs and job creators a fair shot when he picks winners and losers, rewarding campaign donors with tax dollars in scandals like Solyndra.
Barack Obama isn’t giving a fair shot to our children and grandchildren when he saddles them with trillions of dollars of debts.
If there has ever been a president who has failed to give the middle class of America a fair shot, it is Barack Obama.
…
Starting on Day One, I will do what it takes to get America back to work.
Obamacare will end.
We’ll open markets around the world, and make sure that countries like China finally play by the rules.
We’ll get the Keystone Pipeline built and we’ll send a message to the world that a new era of energy independence has begun right here on our continent.
We’ll replace the Obama job killing tax policies with sweeping tax reform to jumpstart job creation.
The government regulators who are strangling small business will finally learn that job creators are our friends, not our enemies.
And once again, the Era of Big Government will be over!
No wonder Bill Clinton and so many other mainstream Democrats are revolting against the backward direction President Obama is taking his Party and our country!
Let us make today the beginning of the end of the disappointments of the Obama years.
Let us make today the start of a new and better chapter that we will write together. …
