The Detroit News Endorses Romney

On Thursday, one day after a Michigan poll had President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney tied in the state, The Detroit News endorsed Romney for president. 

The newspaper acknowledged it was not a shoo-in for a conservative-leaning paper to endorse Romney because many in Detroit support Obama’s auto bailout, but the paper wrote that while “Obama came into office in 2009 riding a wave of hope and change,” he has unfortunately “not delivered on the nation’s yearning for change nor on the specific promises he made to fix what is broken.”

“The president is asking the country to be patient, but his plan isn’t producing results that would merit more patience, and the President hasn’t spelled out what he would do differently in a second term,” the paper wrote.

In endorsing Romney, the paper cited his business background and the fact the he has “has been an effective leader his entire career, both in business and politics” and as governor of Massachusetts, worked “with a Democratic legislature to produce difficult health care and education reforms.”

“We are optimistic he can restore the art of compromise to Washington,” the paper wrote. The paper also compared Romney to Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, who ran as “one tough nerd” in the 2010 campaign:

We anticipate that Romney will govern in the same manner as Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a practical leader who shares his background as a business executive.

Snyder has rapidly set Michigan on the path to revival by applying sound business practices and accountability to government operations. We expect that Romney will also employ a results-oriented approach and be ever mindful of his customer, the taxpayer.

Also like Snyder, we find Romney to be less partisan than the typical politician, and not bound by rigid ideology. The nation will be best served if the entrenched disagreements of the past four years give way to cooperation and achievement.

We are confident that Romney will be focused on the bottom line, and will divert the United States from “the road to Greece,” as he’s said on the campaign trail.

The paper noted that “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” and that the “the economy is still broken, and we have lost confidence in the president’s ability to make the necessary repairs.”

The paper wrote: 

While both poverty and dependency have increased on Obama’s watch, Romney promises to replace government checks with private sector jobs and reverse the decline in middle class incomes. It is heavy lifting, but we favor the candidate who is committed to it.

Romney’s goal is to help all Americans live independent and productive lives, free to rise to the extent of their personal capabilities. He would not shield them from risk or the consequences of their decisions, but neither would he deny them their earned rewards.

While “Obama has proved himself a disciple of the doctrine that for every problem there’s a government solution,” Romney, the paper wrote, “embraces individual initiative and entrepreneurship” and “would turn back the encroachment of the bureaucracy into the private sector.”

“Our hope is that Mitt Romney would 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 paper wrote, noting “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 Detroit News concluded “Romney would replace the heavy hand of government with the invisible hand of a rational marketplace working to produce broad prosperity.”