It’s All Economy, All The Time For Romney [VIDEO]

It’s all economy all the time for Mitt Romney.

The former Massachusetts governor is back to campaign basics as he tries to fend off Republican presidential rival Rick Santorum in Michigan and Arizona primaries next week.

Romney courted tea party voters in suburban Detroit on Thursday night with an indictment of President Barack Obama as a man who is, in Romney’s words, “comfortable living with trillion-dollar
deficits.”

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A day earlier, in Chandler, Ariz., Romney called for a 20 percent cut in personal income tax rates, a step he says will help the economy grow and create jobs.

Next up is a speech Friday morning before the Detroit Economic Club, in a city that is struggling and a state where unemployment stood at 9.3 percent in December.

Study: Candidates’ plans lead to huge deficits

Huge tax cuts in the budget plans of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum would produce the kinds of trillion-dollar-plus deficits that the GOP candidates are blasting President Barack Obama for.

That’s the finding by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington-based budget watchdog group.

The study also says the more modest tax and spending plans of Mitt Romney wouldn’t make a dent in deficits that are on track to average $800 billion or so a year over the coming decade under current trends and policies — and could add to them considerably.

Only Ron Paul, who calls for wrenching budget cuts that dwarf anything proposed by his three opponents, would reduce the flow of red ink. But even Paul’s plan would leave in place large deficits.

Gingrich criticizes Quran burning apology by US

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is expressing outrage over a U.S. apology to Afghan authorities for
burned Qurans on a military base.

Gingrich lashed out Thursday at the Obama administration for the formal apology. Copies of the Muslim holy book were found burned in a garbage pit on a U.S. air field.

President Barack Obama’s apology was announced Thursday morning. A few hours later, news organizations reported that an Afghan soldier had killed two U.S. troops and wounded others in retaliation for the Quran burning.

Campaigning in Washington state, Gingrich says Afghan President Hamid Karzi owes the U.S. an apology for the shootings and that the Afghans “do not deserve the apology of the United States.”

The Obama administration says the apology is appropriate given the religious sensitivities involved.

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)