Pat Dollard

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CNS News:

Washington – Saying that America is not better off than it was $1.8 trillion ago, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said President Obama should stop blaming his predecessor and the American people for high unemployment and growing deficit and failure of the Democratic health care overhaul proposal.

“When it comes to pinning the blame, let’s pin the blame on the donkey,” Romney told a supportive crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), in reference to the Democratic mascot.

Romney is expected to once again seek the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. He failed to win enough conservative support in 2008 because of having taken liberal positions on abortion, gun control and other matters before taking conservative positions on those issues when he campaigned in the Republican primary.

But Romney was on friendly turf, having won three previous CPAC straw polls. The straw poll gauges the presidential preference of CPAC attendees. Romney also has a forthcoming book titled, “No Apologies: The Case for American Greatness.”

When Obama is not blaming former President George W. Bush, he is blaming the Republicans in Congress, whom the president and Democrats have called the “party of no.”

“Of course, the president accuses us of being the party of ‘no.’ It’s as if he thinks that saying ‘no’ is by definition a bad thing,” Romney said. “In fact, it is right and praiseworthy to say no to bad things. It is right to say no to cap and trade, no to card check, no to government health care, and no to higher taxes. My party should never be a rubber stamp for rubber check spending.”

Romney continued that Democrats have said “no” on many things as well.

“But before we move away from this ‘no’ epithet the Democrats are fond of applying to us, let’s ask the Obama folks why they say ‘no’ —no to a balanced budget, no to reforming entitlements, no to malpractice reform, no to missile defense in Eastern Europe, no to prosecuting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a military tribunal, and no to tax cuts that create new jobs,” Romney said.

“You see, we conservatives don’t have a corner on saying no; we’re just the ones who say it when that’s the right thing to do,” he said.

He stated that Obama has even blamed the American people for his failures.

“It seems that we have failed to understand his wise plans for us,” Romney said. “If he just slows down, he reasons, and makes a concerted effort to explain Obamacare in a way even we can understand, if we just listen better, then we will get it.”

Romney, whose own legacy as Massachusetts governor includes expanding a costly state health insurance program, said that Americans understand the Democratic health care plan too well.

“When he barred CSPAN from covering the healthcare deliberations, they saw President Obama break his promise of transparency,” he said.

“When the Democrat leadership was empowered to bribe Nebraska’s Senator [Ben] Nelson, they saw President Obama break his promise of a new kind of politics in Washington; and when he cut a special and certainly unconstitutional health care deal with the unions, they saw him not just break his promise, they saw the most blatant and reprehensible manifestation of political payoff in modern memory,” Romney said.

“No, Mr. President, the American people didn’t hear and see too little, they saw too much,” he added. “Americans said no because Obamacare is bad care for America.”