Image Source: The Toledo Blade
BY: ZACH TOOMBS
On day one of his bus tour to three Midwestern states -- Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa -- President Barack Obama turned the tables on the GOP, firing back at Republican presidential candidates on the economy and health care.
Wolf Blitzer: “He’s getting a little bit more feisty in retorted, in going back, lashing back at the Republicans.”
Brianna Keilar: “That’s right, Wolf. He really stepped up the rhetoric. He was really just lambasting the paralyzing political climate in Washington and really blaming Republicans, specifically looking back to the bruising debt ceiling battle.”
Out of the crowded GOP presidential field, Obama singled out the frontrunner, Mitt Romney, and said the former Massachusetts governor was running from his record on health care reform. MSNBC has his comments.
“You’ve got a governor who’s running for president right now who instituted the exact same thing in Massachusetts. This used to be a Republican idea by the way -- this whole idea of the individual mandate, and suddenly it’s like they got amnesia. It’s like ‘Ah, this is terrible. This is going to take away freedom for Americans all over the world.’”
Defending his own health care reform law, Obama says he’ll own the phrase “Obamacare” rather than have it used as a negative moniker by Republicans.
“I have no problem with folks saying ‘Obama cares.’ I do care. If the other side wants to be the folks who don’t care, that’s fine with me.”
The White House says this bus tour is simply a chance for the president to talk to Americans about jobs and the economy, but, the Republican National Committee disagrees - calling it a political maneuver meant to serve as a campaign kick start.
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus took to FOX News to criticize the bus tour.
“We’re not going to sit around and let this joke continue of a bus tour paid for by the taxpayers of this country, paid for by people who are suffering with unemployment through the sky.”
The president will continue his tour Tuesday with a town hall meeting in Peosta, Iowa.
