Thank You, Des Moines Register

My name is Arthur Christopher Schaper, a resident of Torrance, CA, a suburb of Los Angeles. I know it may seem strange receiving a post from an outside as opposed to a customary “local voice”, but I could not withhold my gratitude to the local press of Des Moines.

I cannot believe what I am reading. Mitt-sanity is sweeping the country. The Des Moines Register, a publication which has helped decide the winners and the losers in the Iowa caucuses and later on the general election in many races, has endorsed Mitt Romney for President. The startling aspect of this kudos stems this paper’s repute of supporting Democrats for the last forty years. The tide is turning in this country, and Iowa is leading the way! Across the country, mainstream media outlets, from the Daily Breeze in my hometown of Torrance, CA, to the Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, three papers that went for Obama in 2008, are now swinging in favor of the former Massachusetts Governor, an established and establishment candidate who maintained a steady approval rating throughout the debates and the primaries to capture the nomination.

The last-minute “low-information” voters are rejecting “Hope and Change” Barack Obama, who over the past four years turned out nothing but the same old “Washington Two-Step”, complete with stimulus dollars to political backers, a health insurance mandate, now a tax, which is crippling hospitals, jacking up premiums, and diminished access to adequate and affordable health care across the country.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has received too much bad press and not enough praise for his work in the private sector and also for his public service as a governor and a presidential candidate. In every debate with the president, from his winning panache in the first to his solid presentation in the last, Romney removed the mask of repudiation and bad reputation which the Obama campaign had painted on him over the past few months.

Romney helped start up and innovate and diversify businesses as CEO of Bain Capital. Contrary to the liberal lambasting which roasted Romney as a job-killer who shipped jobs overseas, Romney helped save companies or bring them into structured reform in order to save jobs. President Obama is the real out-sourcer, an executive who supporter federal loan guarantees to green tech companies, which took the  money and set up energy plants overseas!

As the CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, Romney helped salvage a failing event and transform a deficit-whole into a profit. This kind of “technocratic” savvy is just what we need, a set of skills which the current President never commanded or demonstrated. For all we know about President Obama, a professor, community organizer, and junior senator, Obama has done nothing but talk and write.

Governor Romney has a record of bipartisanship and strong standing on his fiscal conservative principles. He worked with the Massachusetts state legislature, a community that was 87% Democratic, crafting legislation that would support jobs without raising taxes on the middle classes. He did veto eight hundred bills, proposals which would have done more harm than good for the business class or which warred against the right of unborn children to live. Despite the hollow pleas which has maligned Romney as a ‘flip-flopper’, he has asserted that he is pro-life and pro-business, a much-needed combination which this country, still struggling through an anemic recovery.

The swing-state matrix across the country has the two campaigns focusing on Nevada, Colorado, Florida, Virgina, Wisconsin, Ohio, and the Hawkeye State, Iowa, home of the GOP straw poll, the first presidential caucuses, and Michele Bachmann. Obama has given up North Carolina, and Indiana has returned to its Republican roots. Romney is also polling ahead in Colorado, Virginia, and is creeping up in Wisconsin and Ohio. I hope that Iowa helps send a message to Washington that competence and reality, not just commotion and rhetoric, make a president and establish a country. President Obama enjoyed his first boost toward electoral stardom in Iowa. Let us hope that the voters reject the President who did not live up to his Messianic schtick and rhetoric. The Des Moines Register’s endorsement is  a step in the right direction, a move which will likely engage independents, undecided voters, and even likely yet still uncertain Romney supporters.

President Obama had his chance. Yet with high unemployment, two points above the level promised by the President after three years and billions of stimulus dollar; with a failed foreign policy which has emboldened our enemies and alienated our allies, including Israel in the Middle East; and with a domestic policy which is hurting jobs and working families, President Obama failed to deliver for the American people. Now it’s Governor Romney’s turn.

Thank you again, Des Moines Register. To the voters of West Des Moines and the rest of Iowa, please elect Mitt Romney as your next President!