Romney also continued his attack on Obama’s 2009 stimulus package. Mitt: Economy better 'in spite' of W.H.

CRAIG, Colo. — President Barack Obama’s campaign is “trying to find a twig to hang on to,” Mitt Romney told a Tuesday morning crowd here.

“This president is looking for someone to blame,” Romney told a crowd of locals and bused-in coal-miners in this town of 9,000.


“Of course he started off by blaming George Bush, and that worked for a while but, you know, after three and a half years that wears kinda thin. And so then he started to blame Congress. But we remember that he had a super-majority in both the House and the Senate in his own party for his first two years, so you can’t blame Congress. This man is out of ideas, he’s out of excuses and in November we’re going to make sure to vote him out of office.”

“Now his campaign these days is trying to find a twig to hang on to, some little excuse they can grab and say, ‘Look, things are getting a little better, aren’t they?’ And the answer is yeah, things are getting a little better in a lot of places in this country, but it’s not thanks to his policies.”

“It’s in spite of his policies. You see, every recession ultimately comes to an end, but you’d expect that this deep recession might come back to an aggressive turnaround, but it didn’t happen.”

Craig, a northwest Colorado town based on an economy powered largely by the surrounding county’s coal mines, is doing relatively well, according to the mayor. It came on the heels of a new Romney ad that hits the president on his funding of green-energy company Solyndra.

Craig Mayor Terry Carwile, an independent who once ran for the state legislature as a Democrat, said he’s in favor of health-care reform and wish Romney spoke more about his efforts on that score as Massachusetts governor. But Carwile hasn’t made up his mind about which presidential candidate to support.

The unemployment rate in Moffat County, of which Craig is the largest city, was 8.3 percent in April 2012, according to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, compared to 8.1 percent nationally. It was estimated at 8.6 percent in March 2012 and peaked at 11.1 percent in March 2010.

Carwile, himself a retired coal miner, said Romney is the first presidential candidate to visit Craig “in modern times.”

Romney was introduced by local hotel owner Frank Moe, who with his wife Kerrie, starred in the film titled “The Perfect Storm over Craig, Colorado,” that was produced by Energy for America, a joint project of the American Energy Alliance and Americans for Prosperity. Both groups are funded primarily by the Koch brothers.

“When Kerrie and I cried out for help and relief from Obama’s overregulation of the energy industry and his failed economic policies that are hurting out community, Mitt Romney is the one who answered the call,” Frank Moe told the crowd.

But the regulations about which Moe — whose hotel, where Romney and the traveling press stayed Monday night, largely caters to employees of oil, gas and coal companies — complained were implemented by state officials, particularly former Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter.

In 2010 Ritter signed bipartisan legislation requiring that 30 percent of the state’s electricity generation come from renewable sources by 2020.

“I think that we’re seeing both,” Colorado GOP Chairman Ryan Call said. “The stance of local Democrats with Bill Ritter, in terms of ramping up regulations and putting up roadblocks to local energy development and job creation, but we’re also seeing the same coming from Washington, with an overarching regulatory regime both from the EPA as well as from the Department of Natural Resources that is blocking leasing and energy exploration on Western lands that’s a real concern for communities like Craig and a lot of other Western Slope communities.”

Romney also continued his attack on Obama’s 2009 stimulus package, saying that he will seek to assist private sector employment at the expense of public sector jobs.

“That stimulus he put in place, it didn’t help private sector jobs, it helped preserve government jobs and the one place we should have shut back — or cut back was on government jobs,” Romney said. “We have 145,000 more government workers under this president. Let’s send them home and put you back to work.”

Ginger Gibson contributed to this report.