Romney: I Pray Obama Will be Successful
Gov. Mitt Romney called the president to concede, and prayed for the well-being of the U.S. and President Obama."I wish all of them well, particularly the president, the first lady and their daughters," he said. Romney explained, "I ran for office because I'm concerned for America," and added, "Like so many of you, Paul and I have left everything on the field. We have given our all to this campaign."
President Barack Obama won a second term on Tuesday, emerging from a long, punishing, and exorbitant campaign with a new mandate to lead a divided and anxious nation.
"Tonight in this election, you the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up," Obama said in a victory speech in his hometown of Chicago. "We have fought our way back and we know in our hearts for the United States of America, the best is yet to come."
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But the cold reality is that when he returns to Washington, the president will face the same obstacles he did before the election. With Republicans maintaining control of the House of Representatives, the era of divisive partisanship will likely continue.
Obama's triumph unfolded incrementally Tuesday night, as he racked up a string of victories in crucial battlegrounds. One after another, states that had been deemed toss-ups before Election Day fell into the president's hands. Pennsylvania. Wisconsin. New Hampshire. Iowa. With each Obama win, the path to victory for his opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, got narrower.
Finally, just after 11 p.m. ET, NBC News projected Obama to win Ohio, his so-called "firewall" and the one state that has sided with the winning presidential candidate in every election since 1960. Obama's win there, thanks in large part to the state's support of his bailout of the auto industry, handed him the Electoral College swing votes he needed.
Obama's battleground victories were so authoritative that Florida, which was considered the biggest battleground prize, wasn't even a factor. Florida's results likely won't be known until Wednesday morning.
Three battleground states - Florida, Virginia and Nevada - remained too close to call as of 1:15 a.m. ET.
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So many people turned out to vote Tuesday that Ohio, Florida and another battleground, Virginia, kept polls open after closing to accommodate the people who waited in long lines that snaked from the doors of polling places.
Exit polls indicated that Obama was favored among women, young adults, singles and Latinos - the last group by wider margin than in 2008.
Obama suggested in an email to supporters that they overcame the Republican-backed Super PACs that had invested tens of millions of dollars trying to beat him. Obama, Romney and their proxies spent nearly $2 billion, a record amount for a presidential campaign.
"Today is the clearest proof yet that, against the odds, ordinary Americans can overcome powerful interests," Obama wrote in an email to supporters.
Romney conceded the race in a phone call to the president just before 1 a.m. ET, the Associated Press reported. He then took the stage at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel, telling supporters that he wished the president well.
"This is a time of great challenges for America, and I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation," Romney said.
He said he had no regrets, and that he hoped that the country would move past its partisan differences to solve the nation's problems.
"I so wish that I had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead the country in a different direction, but the nation chose another leader," he said.
Less than an hour later, Obama appeared before a roaring crowd at the McCormick Place convention center in Chicago. His wife, Michelle, and their two daughters accompanied him on stage while Steveie WOnder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" blasted. His family left him to deliver his victory speech.
Obama said he'd congratulated Romney "on a hard-fought campaign."
"We may have battled fiercely, but it's only because we love this country, we care so strongly about its future," the president said.
Obama, 51, the country's first black president, won election in 2008 on a promise of hope and change, but he triumphed this time with a starkly different message: asking voters to stick with him as he continues trying to fix the economy and improve America's standing in the world.
He defeated Romney, 65, a wealthy venture capitalist who'd been running for president for the better part of a decade. A win for Romney would have been vindication, of sorts, for his family; his father, George, ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968.
The race highlighted two contrasting visions of the country. Where Romney emphasized the need to lower taxes, relax federal regulations and cut government spending, Obama promised to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and deploy government's help in pulling the country out of the economic doldrums.
Despite his image as stiff and reserved and disinterested in the plight of the middle class, Romney managed to make the race close by appealing to many voters' disappointment in Obama, and widespread anxiety about the economy. Romney promised to bring a businessman's sensibility to the job, a point he drove home in his first presidential debate, which he dominated. That performance sparked a surge in the polls that made the race tight right up until Election Day.
But Romney, in the end, was not able to fully convince an edgy public that he could do a better job than Obama. Nor was Romney able to overcome Obama's image as a more likable guy.
Now Romney may well have run his last race for public office.
In 2008, Obama's cathartic candidacy – seen in contrast to the swaggering belligerence of two-term President George W. Bush - energized a generation of young voters, but their idealism crashed against the realities of conciliation and stalemate.
Obama's first term began on a strong note, with the quick approval of a $787 billion economic stimulus package – and, later, an $80 billion bailout of the auto industry. But his administration soon got tied up in battles with Congress, where he failed to anticipate how difficult it would be to soften partisan rancor. He lost several political battles, failing to repeal Bush-era tax cuts for the rich and enact legislation to protect millions from foreclosures.
Obama's victories, however, were historic and sweeping: the reform of the health care system, the Race to the Top education-reform initiative, the end of the war in Iraq, the killing of Osama bin Laden.
The president's re-election means there will likely be no overturning of his signature domestic policy achievement, a health care reform law known as Obamacare. Obama has also promised to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, those earning more than $250,000 a year.
Obama must also make good on his campaign promises to finally correct America's economic path by finding ways to add a million more manufacturing jobs; boost domestic energy production, including a doubling the use of wind, solar, "clean coal " and natural gas; take money saved from troop withdrawals in Iraq and Afghanistan to invest in infrastructure back home; drastically reduce the county's carbon footprint; save Medicare; cut college loan costs; and slash the national deficit by $4 trillion.
Obama will begin his second term no longer a symbol of political catharsis, but as a flawed but adaptive leader who took a lot of lumps and learned from them.
When he returns to Washington, he won't have much time to savor his victory, because, he'll have to negotiate out of a year-end "fiscal cliff," when a series of tax cuts expire and massive government spending cuts go into effect.
"There's a lot more work to do," Obama emailed his supporters.
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