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Dems: It’s Romney’s to lose

Posted Jan 23, 2012 by William March

Updated Jan 23, 2012 at 03:13 PM

Mitt Romney clearly is worried about the surging Newt Gingrich, but U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston—who’s also chairman of the national Democratic Party—feels pretty sure Romney is the man President Barack Obama will face in November.

In a news conference call with reporters Saturday, Wasserman Schultz spent nearly the entire call bashing Romney, with only a few comments at the end directed at Newt Gingrich.

She said the primary “should be (Romney’s) race to lose, but he’s been doing a good job of losing,” referring to Gingrich’s upset in South Carolina. “The more voters learn about Mitt Romney, the less then like him.”

She said Romney’s promise to release two years of tax returns is “wholly insufficient … It’s part of Mitt Romney acting like he’s the entitlement candidate, that he can play by a different set of rules.”

Like many Republican Romney critics, she noted that Romney’s father, George Romney, released 12 years’ worth of tax returns when he ran for president. She said Romney’s economic plans would “keep his own taxes low and make them lower while doing nothing for the middle class.”

Asked whether she considered Gingrich’s recent comments on food stamps racist—he has called President Barack Obama “the food stamp president” and says black people “should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps”—Wasserman Schultz said the language was “divisive” and “coded words that are carefully chosen” to appeal to the right wing.