Jul 3, 2007 11:46 am US/Eastern
Romney Starting To Make His Case For President
PELLA, Iowa (CBS News) ―
In the Republican presidential primary contest, some experts say former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is the man to beat.
He is leading in key early state polls, led the GOP field for first-quarter fundraising and has the personal wealth to ensure he can match any opponent dollar for dollar.
Romney is campaigning for president the same way he has conducted his entire life: methodically and taking nothing for granted.
Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm spent the day with Romney and his wife, Ann, on the campaign trail in Pella, Iowa, for the first of a two-part series.
Romney has the look and the resume. He made hundreds of millions of dollars as a venture capitalist and used his business experience to rescue the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.
The following year Romney became governor of Massachusetts, no small feat for a Republican. He says he has the experience to be president and shares America's values.
Faith and family are Romney's cornerstones. He and his wife have five sons, all of whom, like their father, went on Mormon missions. Romney was a Mormon bishop and helped build a Mormon church. But the latest CBS News poll says 40 percent of Republican primary voters say that most people they know would not vote for a Mormon. Romney says he is not concerned because "they don't mean a hill of beans worth of difference."
In Iowa, one voter asked Romney what role the Bible would play in his decision-making process, considering that Mormons also have the Book of Mormon as one of their religion's guides.
"I don't know that there's any conflict at all between the values of great faiths," he said.
Romney bristles when asked about the particulars of his faith. When Storm asked Romney if Missouri is a holy land, because in Mormonism, Jesus is said to return to earth to meet Adam there, Romney ducked the question.
"You know, why don't you talk to my church about doctrines of my church and I'm going to leave to me the responsibility I have to talk about America and its future?" he said.
He said that faith is important to him, but he recognizes the role it needs to play when serving the American people.
"Hannah, I think people of faith who love their faith as we all do, recognize that when they take a political office, they put their hand on the Bible and they swear to abide by the Constitution and rule of law," he told Storm.
Other questions surround Romney, such as his shift to the right over key political issues like abortion. When he ran for the Senate in 1994, he said, "I believe abortion should be safe and legal in this country." When he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, he said, "I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose and am devoted and dedicated honoring my word in that regard."
But today he said that he believes Roe v. Wade should be reversed. Some critics charge that Romney changed his stance on abortion as an appeal to conservatives. It's a charge he denies.
"I was governor for four years and I changed my position the first time there was a bill that was brought to my desk that related to life," he said. "And I did change my view — and as I considered … well very simply as I considered this not just as a philosophical issue but as a life and death decision I was going to be making. I changed my mind and said look, we have to protect human life."
Now Romney is in danger of being given the dreaded label of "flip-flopper," the title that helped do in Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee in 2004. Romney doesn't know if the label will stick to him; nor does he seem worried about it.
"If it does we'll apply it to everybody because I don't know anybody on either side of the aisle that's running for President that hasn't changed their mind on a wide range of issues over time," he said.
The biggest issue for any candidate is Iraq and Romney — ever the analytical businessman — wants more specifics on the war made public.
"We're going to hear from General Petraeus what progress is being made, and I would like to see us publicize to the American people what the metrics are that are going to be used to determine whether we are succeeding or not through this troop surge," he said.
Romney's message is resonating in Iowa, where he leads in the polls — thanks in part to the millions he is pouring into television ads there. He's still a distant fourth nationally among GOP candidates, but feels the push in early states will help boost his numbers later on.
"I think experience shows that national polls really aren't very important at this stage but doing well in early primary states and caucus states is what's critical," Romney said. "It is my expectation that the folks that do well in these early states will do well in the later states as well."
On Wednesday, Storm talks with Ann Romney about her 38-year marriage to Mitt, her battle with multiple sclerosis and how the Romneys keep it all together during the chaos of a presidential campaign.
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