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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