Romney: Obama has failed

March 1, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

COLUMBUS

GOP front-runner Mitt Romney said stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons would be his top foreign policy objective if elected president.

And the former Massachusetts governor told an audience in Columbus on Wednesday that President Barack Obama has failed to secure “crippling sanctions” against Iran or taken steps to support “voices of democracy and voices of dissent” in that country.

“The greatest threat to America is nuclear material in the hands of the fanatics from Iran, whether it be the ayatollahs or Ahmadinejad,” Romney said, adding later, “We, of course, don’t want to have to be involved in a military action. At the same time, they know that we are not going to allow them to become a nuclear nation and threaten the viability of America.”

Romney made the comments during a town-hall meeting at Capital University near downtown Columbus, fresh off primary victories in Michigan and Arizona on Tuesday.

Republican presidential hopefuls are turning attention to battleground Ohio in advance of Super Tuesday, with Romney, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich battling for Ohio’s 66 delegates, most of which will be awarded next week.

Romney is lagging Santorum by 7 to 11 percentage points in polls released this week, though close to half of Ohio voters say they might change their mind in the closing days of the state’s primary campaign.

Romney echoed his standard stump speech during his Columbus stop Wednesday — calling for decreased spending and borrowing, a reduction in the size of government and a reversal of course on regulations instituted under President Obama that have hampered business growth.

“This president’s failed,” Romney said. “He’s failed out of ideas. He’s out of excuses, and in 2012, we’ll make sure he’s out of office.”

Romney touted his private-business experience and said he would push to make U.S. tax policies as attractive as those in competing countries.

“I’m planning on lowering tax rates across the board for all Americans by 20 percent so we can get people working again,” he said.

He also mentioned horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a couple of times during his opening comments and subsequent question-and-answer session with an audience of 250-plus people in attendance.

“This is a president who held off on deep-sea oil drilling, who’s made it harder to get natural gas out of the ground by having the EPA get into the fracking regulation business,” Romney said. “He’s made it harder for us to mine coal and to use coal. I don’t think he likes carbon-based sources of energy. They just happen to be the major sources of energy that exist on the planet and that we desperately need.”

Romney also took a few shots at his Republican opponents, particularly Santorum.

“Good folks they are, but they haven’t spent their life in the private sector,” he said. “They don’t understand business and job creation and entrepreneurs and innovation like somebody’s who’s spent 25 years doing that. Rick Santorum’s a nice guy, but he’s an economic lightweight.”

He added later, “If I’m the nominee, I’m going to beat Barack Obama. I don’t think anyone else can.”