The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Friday, January 12, 2012 - 5
Prominent Republicans
defend Romney's record
tilberg R. Boucher II/AP
Fourteen-year-olds Sarah Collins and Nathalie Orozco walk in the snowfall at Cook Memorial Park in Libertyville, III yester-
day. The snowstorm was the first real snowfall of the season.
SMidwest prepares for ir
big snowstorm of winter
Huckabee, Giuliani
and others join
to campaign for
frontrunner
GREER, S.C. (AP) - An array
of Republicans and conservatives
- including some of Mitt Rom-
ney's sharpest critics - rushed to
the GOP presidential front-run-
ner's defense yesterday to coun-
ter efforts to paint the former
venture capitalist as a job-killer.
Under fire, Romney rival Newt
Gingrich backed off from directly
attacking Romney's tenure at the
helm of Bain Capital, but Rick
Perry defended his approach.
"We're disappointed" with the
line of criticism, said Thomas
Donohue, the head of the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce. The
business group doesn't endorse
in presidential campaigns, but
Donohue said: "We think Rom-
ney has had a pretty good track
record. Perfect? Hell no, but
damn good."
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike
Huckabee, who ran against Rom-
ney four years ago, wrote in an
online letter: "It's 'surprising to
see so many Republicans embrace
that left-wing argument against
capitalism." And another 2008
foe, former 'New York mayor
Rudy Giuliani, told Fox News
Channel: "I'm shocked at what
they are doing. I'm going to say,
it's ignorant. Dumb. It's building
something we should be fighting
- ignorance of the American eco-
nomic system."
Romney's new defenders -
many of whom have long his-
tories of disagreeing with the
former Massachusetts governor
- argued that the attacks on his
business record undermined the
GOP's identity and weakened the
party's chief argument against
Democratic President Barack
Obama, that federal intrusion has
stymied the economy's recovery.
And while the latest comments
were more a rejection of attacks
on Romney's record at Bain than
an endorsement of Romney as a
candidate, they signaled awarm-
ing toward Romney by a cross-
section of the GOP as his party
struggles to settle on a more con-
servative alternative. They also
signaled that attempts by ,Gin-
grich, a former House speaker,
and Perry, the Texas governor,
to cast Romney as a cold-blooded
predator in the business world
appeared to be backfiring badly
- and playing right into the Rom-
ney campaign's hands.
A prominent fundraiser in
South Carolina - Barry Wynn -
shifted his support from Perry to
Romney in light of those attacks,
which he said had crossed the
line in a political party that values
free-market capitalism.
"I've been fighting for this
cause most of my life," Wynn
said. "It's like fingernails on the
chalkboard. It just kind of irri-
tated you to hear those kind of
attacks."
Warm weather
gives way to several
inches of snow
MILWAUKEE (AP) - An
unusually mild winter finally
gave way to the Midwest's first big
snowstorm of the season yester-
day, blanketing a region unfazed
by a white Thanksgiving in a layer
of powder and pack that forced all-
too-happy snow plow drivers off
their couches and into the streets.
The storm dumped several
inches of snow on western parts of
Wisconsin and Iowa before mov-
ing eastward into Milwaukee, St.
Louis and Chicago, where up to
* eight inches were expected to fall
by this morning.
In a typical year, such a storm
would hardly register in the upper
Midwest. But the atmospheric
patterns, including the Pacific pat-
tern known as La Nina, that have
conspired to make this an unusu-
ally icy winter in Alaska have kept
it abnormally warm in parts of the
lower 48 states used to more snow.
For Steve Longo, a 47-year-old
chiropractor from Wauwatosa,
Wis., the wait to try out the cross
country skis he got for Christmas
was excruciating. He and friend
Alex Ng, 56, wasted no time in hit-
ting the trails at the Lapham Peak
cross country ski area, about 25
miles west of Milwaukee.
"I wasn't worried," Longo said.
"I was just anxious."
"This is Wisconsin," a confi-
dent Ng said. "There's going to be
snow."
The storm dumped 2 to 6 inches
of snow on eastern Iowa by Thurs-
day evening, and was expected to
drop 3 to 8 inches total on south-
ern Wisconsin and northern Illi-
nois as it moves further into the
Northeast on Friday, according to
Richard Castro, a National Weath-
er Service meteorologist.
While the dry weather has
been an unexpected boon to many
cash-strapped communities,
which have saved big by not hav-
ing to pay for plowing, salting and
sanding their streets, it has hurt
the seasonable businesses that
bank on the snow.
"If people don't see it in their
yards they are not likely to come
out and ski and snowboard so this
is wonderful, wonderful, wonder-
ful for us," said Kim Engel, owner
of Sunburst Ski area in Kewaskum
in southeastern Wisconsin, as she
watched the snow come down out
the window.
Rob Moser, a snow plow driv-
er from Elkhart, Ind., said he
couldn't wait for the flakes to start
to fall. The weather service said
lake effect snow could mean parts
of Michigan and northern Indiana
could get up to a foot.
"I love it. I make money plow-
ing snow and I'm all about snow-
mobiling, so I love it," Moser said.
"We haven't had enough snow to
do much."
The storm was an annoyance
for most commuters, and authori-
ties said it caused hundreds of
traffic accidents and at least three
road deaths - two in Iowa and one
in Missouri. And while some lucky
grade-schoolers cheered an unex-
pected day of sledding, hundreds
of would-be air travelers had to
scramble to come up with a Plan B.
World oil prices climb as Nigerian
union threatens to stop production
Strike part of
nationwide protests
in Africa's most
populous country
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) - A
major union threatened yester-
day to stop the beating heart
of Nigeria's economy - crude
oil production - as part of a
nationwide strike and protests
gripping Africa's most populous
nation.
World oil prices climbed on
the news. Nigeria is the fifth-
largest oil exporter to the U.S.,
and a shutdown would force
American refineries to replace
630,000 barrels per day of crude.
The union's ability to enforce
a shutdown, beginning Sunday,
across the swamps of Nigeria's
southern delta to its massive off-
shore oil fields, remains in ques-
tion. But the threat of a strike
caused jitters on global oil mar-
kets as traders worldwide wor-
ried about supply.
Nigeria has been paralyzed
by a strike that began Monday
after President Goodluck Jona-
than's government abandoned
subsidies that kept gasoline
prices low. Overnight, prices at
the pump more than doubled,
from $1.70 per gallon (45 cents
per liter) to at least $3.50 per
gallon (94 cents per liter). The
costs of food and transporta-
tion also doubled in a nation
where most people live on less
than $2 a day.
Anger over losing one of the
few benefits average Nigerians
see from being an oil-rich coun-
try, as well as disgust over gov-
ernment corruption, have led
to demonstrations across this
nation of 160 million people and
violence that has killed at least
10 people.