IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: GOVERNOR ROMNEY CALLS FOR CHANGE IN WASHINGTON
Governor Mitt Romney
South Carolina Republican Presidential Debate
Myrtle Beach, SC
January 10, 2008
Governor Mitt Romney: "I've had the chance to do almost 200 town meetings across the country. I've listened to people, well, in a restaurant here called Lizard's Thicket, to places all over the country. And I keep hearing the same thing, which is that Washington is broken. That Washington has made promises to America it has not kept, and it seems incapable of dealing with the challenges that we face globally and here at home.
"I hear that people say they think we deserve health care for all our citizens but not government health care, and that hasn't been done. They say we ought to be able to get a reduction on the burden on the middle class, and that hasn't been done. They say we ought to solve the immigration problem in this country, protecting legal immigration, but ending illegal immigration, it hasn't been done. They say there's too much pork-barrel spending and earmarking in Washington, that hasn't stopped. And so the same people, year after year, make these promises and then go to Washington and nothing happens.
"And so I'm convinced that you're going to see the people say, across this country, that if you send the same people back to Washington just to sit in different chairs, nothing will happen. My whole life has been about bringing change to things I've touched, to the business world for 25 years and tried to bring change, sometimes I did positively, not always, but I learned from that experience. I went to the Olympics and turned those games around with the help of a terrific team of people. I went to the state of Massachusetts when revenues were falling, when jobs were falling, I helped turn that around. I know how to bring change, and I will change Washington. I will take it apart and put it back together simpler, smaller, smarter. But I will bring change, and I will honor the promises that the American people have heard from me and from others who care about Republican principles."
