Daily Archives: June 17, 2012

If sometimes it seems like the two candidates for president are speaking different languages, the reason is simple:

They are.

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney use distinct vocabularies. Each has a campaign glossary of sorts to define himself, criticize the other guy, highlight opposing economic philosophies.

Fair shot or economic freedom? The nation's welfare or class warfare? You're-on-your-own economics or the heavy hand of government?

The president has tried to cast himself as the champion of the middle class. He claims Romney wants to perpetuate failed economic policies that favor the rich and privileged business interests over everyday workers. Obama regularly denounces tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires and frequently talks about the importance of "playing by the rules."

Romney has portrayed himself as Mr. Turnaround, the hands-on guy whose 25 years in the private sector give him the ideal resume to revive an economy he contends has gone from bad to worse under the president. His speeches are filled with patriotic references to the Founding Fathers and regular mentions of "free enterprise" and "prosperity."

"In a lot of ways, it's the standard party line Democrat, working-class rhetoric, Republican, business class," says Mitchell McKinney, professor of communication at the University of Missouri.

"Both are playing to the base. ... Obama has to address those disparities in the economy without seeming that he is anti-business, anti-capitalist. ... Romney wants to tout the making of money and successful working of the capitalist system but not highlight in any way the downside. In that sense they both have fine lines they're trying to walk."

Both men have tripped on their own rhetoric.

There was Obama's recent retreat from his assertion that "the private sector is doing fine" and Romney's declaration that "corporations are people." In coming months, McKinney says, the candidates, surrogates and big-money political groups will repeat certain words and phrases "so America comes to accept their narrative as reality. Clearly, words do matter."

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Fair shot, freedom, class warfare: Economic glossary of campaign '12 shows big divide

NORWICH

The sound of freedom rang outside City Hall here late Saturday afternoon, with the inaugural ringing of a unique memorial to American history's most famous proclamation.

The bright, shining, 250-pound Norwich Freedom Bell, cast and polished on Friday and Saturday, commemorates the upcoming 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. The executive order, which President Abraham Lincoln made public five days after the North's Civil War victory at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862, freed all slaves within the rebellious Confederate states, effective with his signature on Jan. 1, 1863.

The bell pealed for the first time at 6 p.m., the clapper sounded by Jacqueline Owens, president of the Norwich branch of trhe NAACP. A succession of dignitaries and onlookers took turns pulling the cord.

"Let freedom ring!" someone in the audience yelled.

The bell was paraded to City Hall from the harbor park, where its casting began with a Friday morning ceremony. With the Freedom Schooner Amistad docked nearby, and an Abraham Lincoln re-enactor helping out, local elementary school students spent their last day of school passing palm-sized ingots to the crew of a mobile foundry, where the bits of bronze were melted down at 2,130 degrees.

Norwich, home of Connecticut Civil War Gov. William Alfred Buckingham, first celebrated the proclamation on Jan. 2, 1863, with an hour-long, city-wide ringing of church bells and a 100-gun salute. Republican Mayor James Lloyd Greene famously paid for the gunpowder himself after five residents went to court to protest the $98 expense.

Officials hope that the casting of the new bell which highlighted a three-day, multi-cultural ceremony culminating on Juneteenth, the celebration of the abolition of slavery not only recognizes the Rose City's role in the abolition movement and the Civil War, but spurs public interest in its long history, boosting its stock as a destination for historic and cultural tourism.

"Thank you for finding this unique way to celebrate this historic even in our nation's history,'' Gov. Dannel P. Malloysaid, speaking at a Friday luncheon that included city and state officials, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Gail Adams, a U.S. Department of the Interior official. Adams said the national tourism strategy of President Barack Obama's administration's envisions promoting "lesser-known jewels" such as Norwich.

The bell, brainchild of the local Emancipation Proclamation Commemoration Committee, was funded through $100,000 in state support and local donations. The Verdin Co. of Cincinnati, Ohio, a 170-year-old, family-owned manufacturer of bells, carillons and clocks, was commissioned to do the casting, using the customized traveling foundry it developed 11 years ago.

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Sound Of Freedom Rings In Norwich

Appearing via video at the Faith and Freedom Coalitions annual meeting Saturday morning, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) delivered a speech that hinged on social issues but also focused in on what remains the top issue in the presidential election the economy.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R). (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

If people want a president that will give the middle class of America a fair shot, theyll vote for me, and I hope you do, Romney, dressed in a suit and standing in front of his campaign bus in Pennsylvania, told the several hundred social conservatives gathered in Washington for the summit.

In his prepared remarks, Romney spoke of anchors, which he said include family and the Constitution.

The national health-care law, he argued attacks freedoms. Raising taxes attacks freedoms. And the Obama administrations decision on contraceptive coverage attacks our first freedom religious freedom, he said.

All these things impinge upon our freedoms. ... I think America is stronger when were lashed firmly to the anchors that keep us steady, he said.

At times, he struck a note that bore similarities to the message former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) delivered on the campaign trail.

He told the crowd that his message to young people is to get married before they have children, because the opportunity for a mom and a dad to help guide the life of a child gives them such an enormous advantage.

And he noted a 2009 Brookings study that Santorum has been fond of citing. The study, Romney said, shows that if Americans graduate from high school, work and get married before having children, their chance of becoming impoverished is dramatically reduced.

Romney fielded three pre-selected questions from the audience. In response to the first Do you agree with President Obama that the private sector is doing fine? Romney dinged Obama for the remark, which he argued is the latest evidence that the president is out of touch on the economy.

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Romney addresses Faith and Freedom Coalition via video from bus tour