Mitt Romney will criticize Hillary Clinton as ill-equipped to tackle the biggest foreign policy and economic problems facing the country, in a speech at Mississippi State University on Wednesday evening.
“Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cluelessly pressed a reset button for Russia, which smiled and then invaded Ukraine, a sovereign nation,” Romney says, according to excerpts released by a spokesman. “The Middle East and much of North Africa is in chaos. China grows more assertive and builds a navy that will be larger than ours in five years. We shrink our nuclear capabilities as Russia upgrades theirs.”
Romney, who is weighing a third bid for president, would likely face Clinton in a general election if he were to be the Republican Party’s nominee. Many potential Republican candidates have begun to publicly attack Clinton’s record — including Romney, who in a speech to the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in San Diego earlier this month skewered “the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama foreign policy.”
On Wednesday, Romney will expand on that theme, anchored in the three issue areas that would likely comprise the foundation of Romney’s campaign: foreign policy, helping the middle class and poverty.
“How can Secretary Clinton provide opportunity for all if she doesn’t know where jobs come from in the first place?” Romney will say — a reference to Clinton’s declaration in October, “Don’t let anybody tell you that, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.”
Democratic National Committee spokesperson Mo Elleithee responded in a statement, “We don’t really need to hear a lecture on ‘where jobs come from’ from a guy who’s best known for bankrupting companies and profiting off of outsourcing.
Read the full excerpt of Romney’s prepared remarks below:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cluelessly pressed a reset button for Russia, which smiled and then invaded Ukraine, a sovereign nation. The Middle East and much of North Africa is in chaos. China grows more assertive and builds a navy that will be larger than ours in five years. We shrink our nuclear capabilities as Russia upgrades theirs.
Doesn’t the President understand that some of what we are seeing in the world is in part the result of his timid foreign policy, of walking away from his red line in Syria, of paring back our military budget, and of insulting friends like Israel and Poland? Strong American leadership is desperately needed for the world, and for America.
Second, we need to restore opportunity, particularly for the middle class. And that will soon include you–you deserve a job that can repay all you’ve spent and borrowed to go to college. Short term, our economy is looking up. But it is a lot better for the few, and pretty darn discouraging for the many. Incomes haven’t gone up in decades. And I can’t count how many recent college graduates I met who expected a high paying job at graduation and instead were waiting tables.
How can Secretary Clinton provide opportunity for all if she doesn’t know where jobs come from in the first place? And how does President Obama expect to make America the best place on earth for businesses, as he promised in his State of the Union address, if he persists in business taxation that is the highest in the developed world, regulations that favor the biggest banks and crush the small ones, a complex and burdensome healthcare plan, and a slanted playing field for unions and trial lawyers. We need a president who will do what it takes to bring more good paying jobs to the placement offices of our college campuses.
And third, we need to lift people out of poverty. Almost every week during my campaign, I met folks who had fallen into poverty as result of an unfortunate event, like losing a job. These folks were almost uniformly optimistic about finding their way back into the middle class. But I also met folks who had been in poverty from generation to generation. These we have to help escape the tragedy and the trap of chronic generational poverty. For fifty years and with trillions of dollars, Washington has fought the war on poverty with failed liberal policies. They haven’t made any headway whatsoever. It’s finally time to apply conservative policies that improve America’s education system, promote family formation and create good-paying jobs.”
