NBC Politics - decision

Oct

2012

9:24pm, EDT

Des Moines Register endorses Romney

By NBC’s Alex Moe

SABINA, OH -- For the first time in four decades, Iowa’s influential newspaper endorsed a Republican candidate for president as The Des Moines Register announced Saturday night its support of Gov. Mitt Romney in the November election.

The Register, in an editorial that will run in Sunday’s paper, asks voters to give Romney "a chance to correct the nation’s fiscal course and to implode the partisan gridlock that has shackled Washington and the rest of America."

In 2008, the Register endorsed Barack Obama. The last Republican to win the support of the paper was Richard Nixon in 1972.

“Barack Obama rocketed to the presidency from relative obscurity with a theme of hope and change. A different reality has marked his presidency. His record on the economy the past four years does not suggest he would lead in the direction the nation must go in the next four years,” the editorial posted on the Register’s website said.

“Voters should give Mitt Romney a chance to correct the nation’s fiscal course and to implode the partisan gridlock that has shackled Washington and the rest of America — with the understanding that he would face the same assessment in four years if he does not succeed,” the editorial piece ended.

The announcement from Iowa’s largest newspaper comes just days after President Obama had an off-the-record then turned on-the-record conversation with the publisher and editor of the Register that prompted an op-ed from the paper about the condition of the interview.

Romney has some ground to make up in the state, which awards six electoral votes, as last week’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll of Iowa showed Romney trailing Obama in the state -– 51 percent to 43 percent. Romney narrowly lost the Iowa Caucus back in January to former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.

When voters receive their Sunday paper in the morning, they will not only find the editorial endorsing Romney but also a copy of the “Mittzine”-– a pro-Romney superPAC publication about the GOP nominee and being dropped in five battleground states

Romney travels to Davenport, Iowa, on Monday for a rally. His running mate, Paul Ryan, is also expected to head back to the Hawkeye State within the next nine days leading up to the election.

Jan

2012

9:50pm, EST

Santorum cancels events to be with sick daughter

By The Associated Press

Updated at 1 a.m. ET: WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum canceled his Sunday morning campaign events and planned to spend time with his hospitalized daughter.

"Rick and his wife Karen are admitting their daughter Bella to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia this evening," spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement Saturday night, adding "Rick intends to return to Florida and resume the campaign schedule as soon as is possible."

Santorum had been scheduled to appear on NBC's "Meet the Press" and attend church in Miami. Officials did not cancel Sunday's afternoon events in Sarasota and Punta Gorda.

Isabella Santorum has Trisomy 18, a genetic condition caused by the presence of all or part of an extra 18th chromosome. When asked about her, Santorum says his daughter was not expected to survive until her first birthday and often has to catch himself to stop from tears.

"I have a little girl who's 3 ½ years old," he told Christian conservatives in Iowa before winning that lead-off contest.

"I don't know whether her life is going to be measured — it's always been measured — in days and weeks. Yet here I am. ... because I feel like I wouldn't be a good dad if I wasn't out here fighting for a country that would see the dignity in her and every other child."

When voters ask him about her, he calls the decision to campaign "gut-retching" but says he goes forward for all special needs families.

"You think she's fine, and then one cold and she's this close to dying," he told The Washington Post last year in an interview.

In October, he missed one of Bella's surgeries to participate in a debate and told the audience that he planned to take an all-night flight home from Las Vegas to be with her.

"I look at the simplicity and love she emits," Santorum said in a web video his campaign released after his scheduling drew questions, "and it's clear to me we're the disabled ones."

Santorum largely has kept his daughter off the campaign schedules, preferring her to stay home with her mother. But Bella did join Santorum for a few days around Iowa's straw poll in August, and she joined her family in Charleston, S.C., the day of its primary.

She didn't join her six siblings for the public speech. She stayed backstage.