Romney Touts His Business Skills to Des Moines Insurance Employees

Mitt Romney, fresh from Tuesday night's Republican debate in which he and Newt Gingrich tussled for front-runner status, spoke to Des Moines insurance workers this morning, telling them that he'll cut the federal deficit and balance the budget.

Appearing at Nationwide Insurance's regional headquarters in downtown Des Moines, it was the 64-year-old former Massachussetts governor's eighth day in Iowa and only his 18th appearance in the state in this campaign, according to DesMoinesRegister.com's candidate tracker.

Despite being largely absent from the state and only recently opening a state campaign office, Romney has been been seen as a frontrunner in many Iowa polls. He led in 2008 as well, a year he campaigned vigorously in the state, but fell to second place behind a late-surging Mike Huckabee.

Just this week, a futures market operated by students in the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business had Romney as the favorite of 70 percent of the smart money to win the nomination.

He was the choice of 72 percent of investors to finish in the top two in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, despite his absence from the state. So far, Romney's careful strategy that the Republican nomination is his to lose has been paying off in Iowa. 

Romney spoke to a standing-room only crowd of about 300 Nationwide employees and supporters for about 20 minutes and took questions from the audience. Why Nationwide? Romney mentioned a good friend of his in Boston, who was a principal in the company.

Romney appeared with South Dakota Sen. John Thune, who has endorsed him, and told the crowd that Romney is the best person to fix the dire economics straits the country is in.

"In business, he turned failing companies around, he turned the Olympics around, he turned Massachussetts around, he'll turn this country around," said Thune.

Romney also took three questions and the first questioner asked him what his secret would be to defeat President Obama.

"How we will beat President Obama is by speaking day in and day about the one topic he does not want to talk about, which is the economy," said Romney.

The topic of the economy and whether Obama wants to talk about it is the subject of a controversial Romney television ad. The ad, Romney's first, shows a clip of Obama saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” 

The ad has been criticized as being misleading. It uses a clip from the 2008 presidential campaign, and Obama was actually quoting his Republican opponent, John McCain. Here’s the full quote: “Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.”

In a quick chat with the press corps after the event, Romney said that his campaign had sent out a press release with the full Obama quote after questions were raised about the ad.

In response to a woman's question about how he would accomplish change, Romney spoke at length about how he worked with Democratic legislators in Massachusetts to effect change and his aim to bridge party gaps to bring "good Democrats and good Republicans" together to solve the country's problems.

"I can't guarantee that I'll be able to accomplish all that I want to do, but I will guarantee that I'll do everything in my power to keep America strong and great."