TAMPA, Fla.—His Republican National
Convention curtailed by a threatened hurricane, Mitt Romney conceded Sunday
that fresh controversy over rape and abortion is harming his party and he
accused Democrats of trying to exploit it for political gain.
"It really is sad, isn't it, with all
the issues that America faces, for the Obama campaign to continue to stoop to
such a low level," said Romney, struggling to sharpen the presidential
election focus instead on a weak economy and 8.3 percent national unemployment.
His comments came as aides and party
officials hurriedly rewrote the script for the convention, cut from four days
to three because of the threat posed by approaching Tropical Storm Isaac. The
storm is forecast to
The revised schedule included a symbolic
10-minute session on Monday in a nearly empty hall, during which officials
intend to launch a debt clock set to zero. The political objective is to show
how much the government borrows throughout the convention week.
Officials did not rule out further changes
because of the weather, and sidestepped when asked what might happen if, as
seemed possible, the storm made landfall in the New Orleans area on the seventh
anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. That storm killed 1,800 people and devastated
the city.
"We're 100 percent full steam ahead on
Tuesday," said Reince Priebus,
Despite concerns about the weather, a
mammoth pre-convention celebration went on as planned Sunday night, attended by
thousands of delegates and others who flocked to the Rays major league baseball
stadium turned into a party venue in nearby St. Petersburg.
Priebus said Romney's nomination would take
place on Tuesday, as would approval of a conservative
The former Massachusetts governor delivers
his acceptance speech Thursday night before a prime time TV audience, then sets
out on the final leg of a quest for the presidency that spans two campaigns and
more than five years.
Polls make the race a close one, with a
modest advantage for President Barack Obama.
For all the Republican attempts to make the
election a referendum on the incumbent's handling of the economy, other events
have intervened.
An incendiary comment more than a week ago
by Rep. Todd Akin, the party's candidate for a Senate seat in Missouri, is
among the intrusions. In an interview, he said a woman's body has a way of
preventing pregnancy in the case of a "legitimate rape." The
Romney and other party officials,
recognizing a political threat, unsuccessfully sought to persuade Akin to quit
the race. Democrats have latched onto the controversy, noting not only what
Akin said but also his opposition to abortion in all cases.
"Now, Akin's choice of words isn't the
real issue here. The real issue is a Republican Party—led by Mitt Romney and
Paul Ryan—whose policies on women and their health are dangerously wrong,"
said a recent letter from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the
Democratic Party.
The party also posted a Web video that
emphasizes the Republican Party's opposition to abortion and digitally alters
the Republicans' "Romney-Ryan" logo to say "Romney Ryan
Akin."
Interviewed on Fox, his comments broadcast
on Sunday, Romney said the controversy over Akin "hurts our party and I
think is damaging to women."
Romney spent the day in New Hampshire where
he has a summer home. Aides said he was spending part of his afternoon
practicing his convention speech with the use of a teleprompter.
Delegates marked time as the storm raked
the Florida Keys to the south of the convention city en route to a projected
landfall along the Gulf Coast.
"Somebody raised the prospect of
marathon Monopoly. I favor the game Risk, but we'll see," said Tom Del
Beccaro, chairman of the California delegation. I think people
Hundreds of miles away, Romney said he was
concerned for the safety of those who "are going to be affected" by
the storm, which is predicted to worsen into a hurricane as it heads for
landfall along the Gulf Coast.
In a presidential race defined by its
closeness, Republican office-holders past and present said the party must find
a way to appeal to women and Hispanics, and they said the economy was the way
to do it.
"We have to point out that the
unemployment rate among young women is now 16 percent, that the unemployment
rate among Hispanics is very high, that jobs and the economy are more
important, perhaps, than maybe other issues," said Arizona Sen. John
McCain, who lost to Obama in 2008.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush agreed, saying
that Romney "can make inroads if he focuses on how do we create a climate
of job creation and economic growth." If he succeeds, "I think people
will move back towards the Republican side," Bush added.
Obama leads Romney among women voters and
by an overwhelming margin among Hispanics, but he trails substantially among
men.
The result is a race that is unpredictably
close, to be settled in a small number of battleground states.
An estimated $500 million has been spent on
television commercials so far by the two candidates, their parties and
supporting outside groups, nearly all of it in Florida, North Carolina,
Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. Those states account
for 100 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to win the White House.
Republicans have made no secret that they
are eager to expand the electoral map to include Pennsylvania, Michigan,
perhaps running mate Paul Ryan's Wisconsin and even Minnesota, states with 68
electoral votes combined.
All four are usually reliably Democratic in
presidential campaigns. Yet Romney has a financial advantage over the
president, according to the most recent fundraising reports, and a move by the
Republicans into any of them could force Obama to dip into his own campaign
treasury in regions he has considered relatively safe.
Making his case for the support of female
voters, Romney said in the Fox interview: "'Look, I'm the guy that was
able to get health care for all of the women and men in my state. ... 'I'm very
proud of what we did."
It was a rare voluntary reference to the
legislation he signed as governor of Massachusetts that required the state's
residents to purchase coverage, the sort of mandate that is at the heart of
Obama's federal legislation that conservatives oppose and Romney has vowed to
see repealed.
Romney added that the state law was put
into place "without cutting Medicare, which obviously affects a lot of
women."
That was a reference to the federal law,
which cut more than $700 billion in projected Medicare costs to help provide
health care to millions who could not otherwise afford it.
Medicare generally favors Democrats as a
political issue, but Romney has aggressively sought to cut into that advantage.
He released a new television ad criticizing Obama's handling of the program
with a catchphrase of "It ain't right."
The streets around the convention hall were
crowded with police, National Guard and other security officials, who manned
checkpoints in squads rather than individually.
A few hundred protesters gathered in a park
about a half-mile from the convention vowed to make their point regardless of
Tropical Storm Isaac. They set out large blocks of ice spelling out the words
"middle class," and left them to melt on a warm, humid day, a gesture
meant to signify middle class disappearance in a tough economy.
Bush and McCain were interviewed on NBC,
and Priebus spoke on CNN.
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