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.