Ann Romney: "You can trust Mitt"

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and wife Ann wave to the crowd at the Tampa Bay Times Forum in Tampa, Florida, on August 28, 2012 during the Republican National Convention.

/ STAN HONDA/AFP/GettyImages

(CBS News) TAMPA, Fla. - In a much-anticipated speech to the Republican convention, Ann Romney set out to show voters a more personal side of her husband, Mitt Romney, but at the top of her remarks, she deviated from her script to reference Hurricane Isaac, which made landfall in Louisiana tonight.

We "hope and pray that all remain safe and no life is lost and no property is lost," she said.

The goal of Ann Romney's speech was to help soften the image of her husband and she delicately touched on a side of him that he has somewhat deliberately hidden from view.

After taking the stage to a standing ovation, the crowd hushed to hear her say that Mitt Romney "was not handed success," insinuating that his success was hard-fought and well-deserved.

"He built it," she said, referring to the event's Tuesday night theme, which is a reference to a remark President Obama made at a rally in Virginia last month where he said, "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help," adding "you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

Taking the opposite approach of the political speeches that preceded hers, which drew out the differences between Romney and his challenger President Obama, Ann Romney focused less on politics and more the personal side of Mitt Romney. She talked about "the one great thing that unites us."

(Watch the full speech at left)

"Tonight I want to talk to you about love," she said. "I want to talk to you about the deep and abiding love I have for a man I met at a dance many years ago. And the profound love I have, and I know we share, for this country."

Her speech is a clear effort to bridge the empathy gap Romney has with voters. A new CBS News poll revealed only 41 percent of voters think Romney understands their problems compared to 54 percent who feel President Obama does. Romney's lack of personal appeal is a consistent pattern Romney has faced throughout the campaign as voters have said he is less likeable and personable than Mr. Obama.

Romney has been working on the speech for the past couple of weeks and that the goal of her speech was for Americans to feel a connection to her husband.

"There's no better surrogate than Ann Romney," a senior Romney campaign aide said Tuesday.

Mitt Romney flew to Tampa for the evening for Ann Romney's speech. Before the speech, the couple sat on a couch off stage watching the convention on Fox News, according to pool reports.

Looking to appeal to women voters, with whom Mr. Obama has a distinct advantage, Ann Romney spoke directly to women.

"You're the ones who always have to do a little more," she said, calling out to mothers, grandmothers, sisters and daughters. "You know what it's like to work a little harder during the day to earn the respect you deserve at work and then come home to help with that book report which just has to be done."

Do conventions still matter?

"We don't want easy. But these last few years have been harder than they needed to be," she said, invoking the economic issues that Republicans say are most important to women voters.

"You are the hope of America," she added, referring to President Obama's 2008 campaign slogan: hope.

Romney talked mostly, however, about her 42-year marriage to the Republican presidential candidate.

"I read somewhere that Mitt and I have a 'storybook marriage,'" she said, adding the realities of a long partnership. "Well, in the storybooks I read, there were never long, long, rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once. And those storybooks never seemed to have chapters called MS [multiple sclerosis] and breast cancer."

"A storybook marriage? No, not at all. What Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage," she said.

Ann Romney said the Mitt Romney she knows is the person most qualified to run the country.

"[L]et me say this to every American who is thinking about who should be our next President: No one will work harder, no one will care more, no one will move heaven and earth like Mitt Romney to make this country a better place to live."

"This man will not fail," she added.

"You can trust Mitt."

After wrapping up her remarks, Mitt Romney walked out on stage and hugged and kissed his wife as the old Temptations tune "My Girl" played in the background.

Complete CBS News convention coverage.

[suzanajohnson]

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[smdonromney]

Mitt Romney in his own words:

"I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years we should sustain and support it."
"Roe v. Wade has gone too far."

"I don't line up with the NRA."
"I'm a member of the [NRA]."

"I like mandates. The mandates work."
"I think it's unconstitutional on the 10th Amendment front."

"I respect and will protect a woman's right to choose."
"I never really called myself pro-choice."

"I saw my father march with Martin Luther King."
"I did not see it with my own eyes."

"I supported the assault weapon ban."
"I don't support any gun control legislation."

"I think the minimum wage ought to keep pace with inflation."
"There's no question raising the minimum wage excessively causes a loss of jobs."

"I will work and fight for stem cell research."
"In the end, I became persuaded that the stem-cell debate was grounded in a false premise."

"I would like to have campaign spending limits."
"The American people should be free to advocate for their candidates and their positions without burdensome limitations."

"I'm a strong believer in stating your position and not wavering."
"I changed my position."

"Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check."
"I'll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry's come back."

"I'm not in favor of privatizing Social Security or making cuts."
"Social Security's the easiest and that's because you can give people a personal account."

"I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush."
"Ronald Reagan is... my hero."

"I've been a hunter pretty much all my life."
"Any description of my being a hunter is an overstatement of capability."

"If Massachusetts succeeds in implementing it, then that will be a model for the nation."
"What works in one state may not be the answer for another."

"It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam."
"I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there."

"It's a tax cut for fat cats."
"I believe the tax on capital gains should be zero."

"It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."
"He's going to pay, and he will die."

"The TARP program... was nevertheless necessary to keep banks from collapsing in a cascade of failures."
"When government is... bailing out banks... we have every good reason to be alarmed."

"These carbon emission limits will provide real and immediate progress."
"Republicans should never abandon pro-growth conservative principles in an effort to embrace the ideas of Al Gore."

"Those... paying taxes and not taking government benefits should begin a process toward application for citizenship."
"Amnesty only led to more people coming into the country."

"When I first heard of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, I thought it sounded awfully silly."
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell has worked well."

- Mitt Romney

[rhodzimm]

And we are asked to trust him??? He says you shouldn't have to apologize for being successful. He's right. Except maybe if you derived your "success" by firing people, ending their medical insurance, pilfering their retirement plan, maybe you should feel a little guilt when you made millions off the misery of others. One reason he won't release his taxes is folks might wonder how he can give huge amounts to the Mormon Church - just not the country who made his "success" possible. TRUST??

[NewbiusMaximus]

This is Mitt Romney, the vampire who would be president.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829#ixzz250YKg91T

Here is an excerpt:

"Here's how Romney would go about "liberating" a company: A private equity firm like Bain typically seeks out floundering businesses with good cash flows. It then puts down a relatively small amount of its own money and runs to a big bank like Goldman Sachs or Citigroup for the rest of the financing. (Most leveraged buyouts are financed with 60 to 90 percent borrowed cash.) The takeover firm then uses that borrowed money to buy a controlling stake in the target company, either with or without its consent. When an LBO is done without the consent of the target, it's called a hostile takeover; such thrilling acts of corporate piracy were made legend in the Eighties, most notably the 1988 attack by notorious corporate raiders Kohlberg Kravis Roberts against RJR Nabisco, a deal memorialized in the book Barbarians at the Gate.

Romney and Bain avoided the hostile approach, preferring to secure the cooperation of their takeover targets by buying off a company's management with lucrative bonuses. Once management is on board, the rest is just math. So if the target company is worth $500 million, Bain might put down $20 million of its own cash, then borrow $350 million from an investment bank to take over a controlling stake.

But here's the catch. When Bain borrows all of that money from the bank, it's the target company that ends up on the hook for all of the debt.

Now your troubled firm - let's say you make tricycles in Alabama - has been taken over by a bunch of slick Wall Street dudes who kicked in as little as five percent as a down payment. So in addition to whatever problems you had before, Tricycle Inc. now owes Goldman or Citigroup $350 million. With all that new debt service to pay, the company's bottom line is suddenly untenable: You almost have to start firing people immediately just to get your costs down to a manageable level.

"That interest," says Lynn Turner, former chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission, "just sucks the profit out of the company.

Fortunately, the geniuses at Bain who now run the place are there to help tell you whom to fire. And for the service it performs cutting your company's costs to help you pay off the massive debt that it, Bain, saddled your company with in the first place, Bain naturally charges a management fee, typically millions of dollars a year. So Tricycle Inc. now has two gigantic new burdens it never had before Bain Capital stepped into the picture: tens of millions in annual debt service, and millions more in "management fees." Since the initial acquisition of Tricycle Inc. was probably greased by promising the company's upper management lucrative bonuses, all that pain inevitably comes out of just one place: the benefits and payroll of the hourly workforce.

Once all that debt is added, one of two things can happen. The company can fire workers and slash benefits to pay off all its new obligations to Goldman Sachs and Bain, leaving it ripe to be resold by Bain at a huge profit. Or it can go bankrupt - this happens after about seven percent of all private equity buyouts - leaving behind one or more shuttered factory towns. Either way, Bain wins. By power-sucking cash value from even the most rapidly dying firms, private equity raiders like Bain almost always get their cash out before a target goes belly up."

Romney has put untold thousands of people OUT of work in this way. For more than fifteen years he has killed an unbelievable number of jobs, sucking the life out of the middle class, and out of America.

[CaptainSmollett]

"U.S. consumer optimism saw its biggest drop this month since October 2011, according to The Conference Board's index, which fell from 65.4 in July to 60.6 in August." Bloomberg (28 Aug.)

Ominous economic news continues to hound Obama. He built that.

[griff713]

good try, but no. GW Bush built it. Do the math. Read history. Trickle down economics would work - if it weren't for the one thing that makes Romney great..... Greed.

[NewbiusMaximus]

It is the trend that is important here. Not just one report. Obama has been pulling us out of the dark and into the light for nearly four years. And the trend that he has established has always been up, Up, UP.

[iAceMadman]

by NewbiusMaximus August 29, 2012 3:55 PM EDT

"His goal as a business person was to grow his wealth, grow wealth for his stockholders ... and he did that in a manner that was absolutely ruthless."


I don't get it. Sometimes when things are that far gone, you have to make hard decisions. Ones that cut out the cancer. Would you call a surgeon ruthless? Is a lawyer making a crucial argument to put criminals in jail ruthless? Is a person of faith, who wants to be protected from this attack on his religious freedom, not supposed to live by his constitutional rights? I don't think so. The Jewish nation understands this too, so not to be made to toil under servitude. We are all become slaves to debt. End the tax increases that makes us subjected to big government.

[NewbiusMaximus]

Please. It really isn't as you think. It is so much more pernicious and deviant. Just do yourself a favor and read this:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829#ixzz250YKg91T

Here is an excerpt:

Here's how Romney would go about "liberating" a company: A private equity firm like Bain typically seeks out floundering businesses with good cash flows. It then puts down a relatively small amount of its own money and runs to a big bank like Goldman Sachs or Citigroup for the rest of the financing. (Most leveraged buyouts are financed with 60 to 90 percent borrowed cash.) The takeover firm then uses that borrowed money to buy a controlling stake in the target company, either with or without its consent. When an LBO is done without the consent of the target, it's called a hostile takeover; such thrilling acts of corporate piracy were made legend in the Eighties, most notably the 1988 attack by notorious corporate raiders Kohlberg Kravis Roberts against RJR Nabisco, a deal memorialized in the book Barbarians at the Gate.

Romney and Bain avoided the hostile approach, preferring to secure the cooperation of their takeover targets by buying off a company's management with lucrative bonuses. Once management is on board, the rest is just math. So if the target company is worth $500 million, Bain might put down $20 million of its own cash, then borrow $350 million from an investment bank to take over a controlling stake.

But here's the catch. When Bain borrows all of that money from the bank, it's the target company that ends up on the hook for all of the debt.

Now your troubled firm - let's say you make tricycles in Alabama - has been taken over by a bunch of slick Wall Street dudes who kicked in as little as five percent as a down payment. So in addition to whatever problems you had before, Tricycle Inc. now owes Goldman or Citigroup $350 million. With all that new debt service to pay, the company's bottom line is suddenly untenable: You almost have to start firing people immediately just to get your costs down to a manageable level.

"That interest," says Lynn Turner, former chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission, "just sucks the profit out of the company.

Fortunately, the geniuses at Bain who now run the place are there to help tell you whom to fire. And for the service it performs cutting your company's costs to help you pay off the massive debt that it, Bain, saddled your company with in the first place, Bain naturally charges a management fee, typically millions of dollars a year. So Tricycle Inc. now has two gigantic new burdens it never had before Bain Capital stepped into the picture: tens of millions in annual debt service, and millions more in "management fees." Since the initial acquisition of Tricycle Inc. was probably greased by promising the company's upper management lucrative bonuses, all that pain inevitably comes out of just one place: the benefits and payroll of the hourly workforce.

Once all that debt is added, one of two things can happen. The company can fire workers and slash benefits to pay off all its new obligations to Goldman Sachs and Bain, leaving it ripe to be resold by Bain at a huge profit. Or it can go bankrupt - this happens after about seven percent of all private equity buyouts - leaving behind one or more shuttered factory towns. Either way, Bain wins. By power-sucking cash value from even the most rapidly dying firms, private equity raiders like Bain almost always get their cash out before a target goes belly up."

Romney has put untold thousands of people OUT of work in this way. For more than fifteen years he has killed an unbelievable number of jobs, sucking the life out of the middle class, and out of America.

[iAceMadman]

No one will work harder, no one will care more, no one will move heaven and earth like Mitt Romney


Were any truer words ever states so eloquently. She knows the heart of Romney, he loves America. He will do what ever it takes to repeal those useless programs that rob our nation's wealth. Our leaderless nation now has come to terms with all the losses over the past four years, the main reason for the shrinking of the middle class is his. There can be no future without a person who knows HOW to build it, and that's President Romney's expertise. Trust and we all will be rewarded.

[TimeToEvolve]

I have to say that Ann Robbed Me and the entire Republicon Party is a disgrace. A pathetic joke who already destroyed the American economy and tricked us into wars and now wants us to trust them. Unbelievably stupid and disgusting people in this Tampa insane asylum.

[jmn122736]

One of the reasons for, at least results of, Joseph Smith's creation of the Mormon Church was to legitimize polygamy, and some of the offspring branches of the church still practice it.

I have often wondered about present-day high-ranking leaders in the main church.
Are they still practicing polygamy secretly? I'm very sure their wives would never say anything.

I'm even more curious about Romney since Ann has said she has had "several" miscarriages and they also have 5 other boys. It wouldn't be hard for someone with Romney's standing in the church, and his financial standing, to conceal multiple "spiritual" weddings. They certainly would not be publicly registered or licensed.

[John782011]

Why does the Romney campaign sign look like an R from the Rolls Royce company? Might as well add Ryan to it to say RR

[WHAT-IS-HE-SMOKING]

Did anyone else feel like the stage at the GOP is just one big pulpit?