Romney Delivers Speech on Freedom At NRA

Excuse my mid-day break.

Reasonably good stuff from "Rot-ney," as Maxine Waters quips.

t’s great to be with so many friends from the National Rifle Association. This fine organization is sometimes called a single-issue group. That’s high praise when the single issue is freedom. All of you can be proud of your long and unwavering defense of our constitutional rights and liberties.

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It was one of Missouri’s greatest sons, Harry Truman, who expressed a guiding conviction that you and I share.

In a ceremony that placed the Constitution and Declaration in the permanent care of the National Archives, President Truman offered a word of caution.

Liberty, he said, “can be lost, and it will be, if the time ever comes when these documents are regarded not as the supreme expression of our profound belief, but merely as curiosities in glass cases.”

Truman believed, as we do, that the principles of our Constitution are enduring and universal...that they were not designed to bend to the will of presidents and justices who come and go.

The belief that we are all created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights – these are not relics from another time, they reflect truths that are valid in every era.

The framework of law created by the Declaration and the Constitution is the source of our greatness.

It has generated unparalleled opportunity and prosperity.

Our Founders understood this, which is why they created a system of government that is limited.

This President is moving us away from our Founders’ vision.

Instead of limited government, he is leading us toward limited freedom and limited opportunity.

This November, we face a defining decision.

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We know what Barack Obama’s vision of America is – we’ve all lived it the last three years.

Mine is very different.

My course restores and protects our freedoms.

As President, the Constitution would be my guide, and the Declaration of Independence my compass.

Today, I want to talk about this administration’s assault on our freedoms – our economic freedom, our religious freedom, and our personal freedom.

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Dodd-Frank is another example of the President's attack on economic freedom. It’s an 848-page behemoth that will be followed by thousands and thousands of pages of new regulations. Regulations are necessary. But burdensome regulations serve only to restrict freedom and imperil enterprise. The victims of those regulations are not nameless, faceless banks. They’re the employees, the business owners, and the customers who rely on financial institutions that lose out.

Under President Obama, bureaucrats are insinuating themselves into every corner of our economy, undermining economic freedom. They prevent drilling rigs from going to work in the Gulf. They keep coal from being mined. They impede the reliable supply of natural gas. They tell farmers what their children can and can't do to help on the farm.

Will Rogers famously said that he worried whenever Congress was in session. Today, our freedom is never safe – because unelected, unaccountable regulators are always on the prowl. And under President Obama, they are multiplying. The number of federal employees has grown by almost 150,000 under this president.

For centuries, the American Dream has meant the opportunity to build something new. Some of America’s greatest success stories are of people who started out with nothing but a good idea and a corner in their garage. Today, Americans look at what it takes to start a business and they don’t see promise and opportunity. They see government standing in their way.

The real cost isn’t just the taxes paid and money spent complying with the rules. It’s the businesses that are never started, the ideas that are never pursued, the dreams that are never realized.

We once built the interstate highway system and the Hoover Dam. Today, we can’t even build a pipeline.

We once led the world in manufacturing, exports, and infrastructure investment. Today, we lead the world in lawsuits.

We once led the world in educating our kids. Today, half the kids in our fifty largest cities won't even graduate from high school.

If we continue along this path, we’ll spend our lives filling out forms, complying with excessive regulations and pleading with political appointees for waivers, subsidies and permission. That path erodes freedom. It deadens the entrepreneurial spirit. And it hurts the very people it’s supposed to help.

Freedom is the victim of unbounded government appetite – and so is economic growth, job growth, and wage growth. As government takes more and more, there is less and less incentive to take risk, to invest, to innovate, and to hire.

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There was a time – not so long ago – when each of us could walk a little taller and stand a little straighter because we had a gift that no one else in the world shared. We were Americans. That meant something different to each of us but it meant something special to all of us. We knew it without question. And so did the world.

Those days are coming back. That’s our destiny.

Good speech. It's not detailed, but campaigns are chiefly conducted in themes, not specific legislative bits.

Jay Cost talks about Obama's lousy reelection strategy. Well, it may be a lousy strategy, but he has lousy facts, doesn't he?

He quotes Reagan's election-winning question from 1980. It would be a shame if commercials did not run constantly quoting this, verbatim, and if Romney did not ask it at the debate.

Next Tuesday all of you will go to the polls; you'll stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were 4 years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was 4 years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was 4 years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we're as strong as we were 4 years ago? And if you answer all of those questions yes, why then, I think your choice is very obvious as to who you'll vote for. If you don't agree, if you don't think that this course that we've been on for the last 4 years is what you would like to see us follow for the next 4, then I could suggest another choice that you have.

Sorry this post is so thin. It's really a disguised open thread. I'm trying to find something new, fast!

posted by Ace at 04:22 PM

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