Mitt Romney was in Ohio today hosting a “storm relief” event … aka he’s campaigning in a crucial swing state.  Romney is simply unwilling to respond to questions by reporters asking him about his position on eliminating FEMA and allowing each state to fend for themselves or possibly even privatizing disaster relief.  Also – yesterday … a transcript turned up of Romney saying America can’t afford disaster relief.  He was asked FOURTEEN TIMES and he would not answer or respond to his prior statements on record about FEMA; he just wanted a photo-op.

This is incredibly embarrassing that a serious contender for President will not respond to their own record.  No matter who wins – I can’t imagine how even 10% of Americans would vote for this guy; he’s just that much of an embarrassment.  It’s just disqualifying.  You can see some of those interactions on the video above.

During that campaign rally “storm relief” event – he gave a speech which you can see in part HERE wherein the campaign purchased and he asked event participants to send canned goods to the Red Cross for storm victims.  One major problem though … someone didn’t tell Governor Romney the Red Cross doesn’t accept canned goods and says the best assistance is CASH (source).

Courtesy of the Huffington Post HERE:

From the Romney pool report:

TV pool asked Romney at least five times whether he would eliminate FEMA as president/what he would do with FEMA. He ignored the qs but they are audible on cam. The music stopped at points and the qs would have been audible to him.

A follow-up report noted the specific questions Romney ignored, as he was collecting hurricane supplies following his event:

“Gov are you going to eliminate FEMA?” a print pooler shouted, receiving no response.Wires reporters asked more questions about FEMA that were ignored.

Romney kept coming over near pool to pick up more water. He ignored these questions:

“Gov are you going to see some storm damage?”

“Gov has [New Jersey Gov.] Chris Christie invited you to come survey storm damage?”

“Gov you’ve been asked 14 times, why are you refusing to answer the question?”

I’m not sure that I can knock Romney for campaigning necessarily as he sees the end of his political career on the horizon as Ohio is set to vote for Obama.  But being in public – he wants to give a speech and get his 5 minute photo-op showing him doing some work to help storm victims … that’s all par for the course.  But Mitt Romney has yet to face up to his comments that he would eliminate Federal disaster relief by turning that responsibility over to each state and even potentially privatizing it if he could.  Or just saying – it’s your problem.

And we’ve shared this HERE; an excerpt:

Last year, after a major tornado and flood struck the United States, Romney was asked in a debate on June 13, 2011 about whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.  He was asked specifically about turning FEMA over to the states – here was his response:

Absolutely, every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?

The debate moderator John King asked Romney…

Including disaster relief, though?

In which Romney responded:

We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids.  It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.

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