PETERBOROUGH — Fresh off a virtual dead heat tie with Rick Santorum in the Iowa caucuses, Mitt Romney turned his attention to New Hampshire last night, speaking to an enthusiastic crowd filling the upper floor of the Peterborough Town House.

“Talk about a squeaker,” Romney said in reference to the Iowa contest, where he placed first by a mere eight votes. “Be sure to get some friends to vote. It might make a difference.”

Romney was accompanied by Sen. John McCain, who endorsed Romney on Wednesday. McCain closed out his 2008 presidential campaign with an election eve rally at the Town House.

In early comments at last night’s meeting, which was still in progress as the Ledger-Transcript went to press, Romney focused on highlighting difference between himself and President Barack Obama, saying that the president has failed in many ways.

“Twenty-five million Americans out of work is testimony that his policies haven’t worked,” Romney said. “It helps to have had a job in the private sector if you want to create jobs.”
Romney recalled that Obama said shortly after being elected that if he couldn’t turn around the state of the nation’s economy, he’d be a one-term president.

“We’re here to collect on that promise,” Romney said.

Romney also said the first priority he’d have, if elected, is to repeal Obama’s health-care initiative. “That one’s gone,” he exclaimed, to loud applause.

As he introduced McCain, Romney said the upcoming presidential election will be about both the direction of the country and the soul of America.

The Founding Fathers, he said, chose the words carefully when they wrote of the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In words that could serve as a rebuttal to the concerns of Occupy Wall Street, Romney said, “The success of some does not make us all poorer. I believe in a merit society. I think President Obama has a different view. He sees the role of government to take from some and give to others.”

Romney is leading in the most recent Suffolk University poll of likely New Hampshire primary voters with 41 percent, well ahead of Ron Paul (15 percent), Newt Gingrich (11 percent) and Jon Huntsman.

Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, had 5 percent in the poll, taken on Dec. 30 and 31, prior to Santorum’s strong showing in Iowa.

Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts who has a summer home in Wolfeboro, is widely considered the favorite in New Hampshire, although the race in Iowa proved very volatile, with Gingrich considered the front-runner a couple of weeks before the election before wilting under what he called a blitz of negative advertising by other candidates.

Santorum, meanwhile, rose rapidly in the last couple of weeks as a conservative alternative to Romney.

This article appeared in the Jan. 5, 2012, edition of the Ledger-Transcript.