Romney Gets His Groove Back in Michigan?

EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images(MILFORD, Mich.) -- Seemingly riding the positive vibes off Wednesday night’s strong debate performance, Mitt Romney returned to Michigan energized, connecting with voters on an atypically emotional level.

Much of his speech to Tea Party groups Thursday night was standard stump, but he related two stories about his father and boyhood in Michigan, and another about the Olympics, hosted in the wake of 9/11, that had audience members nodding approvingly -- even wiping away tears.

Wearing blue jeans and an open collar, Romney seemed relaxed, confident, even, well, at home --  a stark contrast to his performances in recent days.

He did not mention any other candidates by name, but subtly jabbed Rick Santorum.

“Last night, one candidate explained why he voted against his principles. He said you have to take one for the team every now and again. Well, my team is the United States of America.”

Notably, Romney, who just weeks ago was expected to handily win Michigan but is now in a virtual tie with Santorum, tried to connect with his home state audience on a personal level.

“I remember, as a little boy … I was born in Detroit, Harper Hospital, our home was right around Six Mile and Woodward, a place called Palmer Park. We had a home there. It’s been bulldozed now because it turned, I guess, into an eyesore or a place where drugs were being used so they had to tear it down. It was a lovely home.

“I think my dad had a job like being the grand master or whatever of the 50th celebration of the automobile in Detroit. They painted Woodward Avenue with gold paint … my memory is a little foggy here … so I was probably four or something like that, and had the cars go down Woodward Avenue. I know they still have the parade of cars every year.

“But what an extraordinary city this is, and how sad it is to see the city of Detroit suffering as it is now, and the entire state. Over the last decade it seems that Michigan has been suffering a one-state recession, and that recession of course spilled out across the entire nation. That old saying, as goes General Motors, so goes the entire nation? There seems to be some truth to that,” he said.

Romney focused much of his ire at President Obama, claiming the president could not campaign on his record so had instead decided to scapegoat the rich and create division between the country’s richest one percent and the remaining 99 percent.

“Because [Obama] can’t talk about housing values, he can’t talk about unemployment statistics, he can’t talk about how Iran is settling out, or how the Arab Spring is working out, he can’t talk about 24 million Americans out of work, eight-percent unemployment plus for 36 straight months, so he’s got to find some other way to attack, and his attack is to try and divide America,” he said.

“And he will divide the one percent versus the 99 percent, and that’s very tempting to fall into that kind of attack. When you’re in trouble, finding a scapegoat and attacking is a ploy that’s been used over the years by people in trouble,” he said.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

States File Suit Against Contraception Mandate

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(OMAHA, Neb.) -- Nebraska, joined by Republican attorneys general of six other states, filed suit in federal court Thursday challenging the Obama administration’s policy requiring most health insurance plans to cover preventive services for women, including contraception and the morning-after pill, without a co-pay.

The states argue the policy forces religious schools, non-profits and employers to violate their religious and faith-based beliefs by providing insurance plans covering services that conflict with those beliefs.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Nebraska, argues, “The First Amendment has for centuries served as a rampart against government interference with religious liberty.”

The Obama administration altered the policy in early February amid fierce criticism from advocates of religious liberty.

The president announced an accommodation that would allow women to obtain free contraception by obtaining it directly from the insurance company if their employers object to it out of religious concerns.

But the attorneys general reject the accommodation. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said in a statement, “Any rule, regulation or law that forces faith-based institutions to provide for services that violate their free exercise of religion, or that penalizes them for failing to kneel at the altar of government, is a flat-out violation of the First Amendment.”

The states joining Nebraska are Michigan, Florida, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas.

Co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit are two individuals, two nonprofit corporations (Catholic Social Services and the Catholic Mutual Relief Society of America) and Pius X Catholic High School (in Nebraska).

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

Rielle Hunter Settles John Edwards Sex Tape Suit

Steve Exum/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- The long-running court battle over a sexually explicit videotape featuring former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and his mistress, Rielle Hunter, was settled out of court Thursday, ABC News has learned.

According to North Carolina court officials and a Hunter spokesperson, Hunter and former Edwards aide Andrew Young, along with his wife Cheri, agreed to end their dispute more than two years after the case was originally filed.   Terms of the settlement were not immediately available, but Hunter spokesperson RoseMarie Terenzio told ABC News that “Ms. Hunter is very pleased.  She won.”

According to Terenzio’s statement, an alleged sex tape and a series of private photographs that were the center of the legal dispute will be returned to Hunter.

Hunter sued the Youngs in January 2010, claiming the couple had stolen from her a “personal and private” videotape that came to be known in court filings as “the Edwards sex tape.”   She asserted that the Youngs were using the tape to help promote Young’s book, The Politician, which chronicles Edwards’ 2008 run for the Democratic presidential nomination and the candidate’s affair with Hunter.

Edwards gave a lengthy deposition in the case that eventually ended up in the hands of federal prosecutors who are pursuing a felony campaign finance case against the one-time North Carolina senator. That trial had been scheduled to begin in January, but it has been delayed because Edwards needs treatment for a heart condition.

In the civil suit, Hunter claimed that the Youngs had entered her former rental home in North Carolina and took the tape from a hat-box containing her personal items. Young, who once falsely claimed to be the father of Hunter’s child, disputed Hunter’s account, claiming he found the tape partially damaged and discarded in a box of trash in another home they had all previously shared.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

Santorum Addresses Super PAC Donors, Releases Negative Romney Ad

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(PHOENIX) -- Off the campaign trail Thursday, Rick Santorum is appearing at a fundraiser for his Super PAC in Dallas.

Candidates and campaigns are not allowed to “coordinate” with their Super PACs, but they are permitted to address these groups. Mitt Romney has spoken at his Super PAC fundraisers as well. Candidates must leave before the “ask” portion of the event takes place.

Foster Friess, the main donor to the “Red White and Blue Fund,” was planning on being there too, but he’s on an around-the-world trip with his wife, Lynn, for about three weeks.

After the CNN debate on Wednesday evening, Santorum was asked in the spin room, where reporters gather, what he was planning to tell the donors.

“It’s a fundraiser, I’m not doing a Super PAC event,” Santorum said, either incorrectly or falsely.

Santorum’s national communications director Hogan Gidley said he wasn’t sure what Santorum meant by the incorrect statement. And just because he’s off the trail doesn’t mean the campaign isn’t still waging its battle for Michigan, where Santorum will be back campaigning Friday. On Thursday the campaign released a new negative television ad that goes hard after Romney in his home state.

“I don’t line up with the National Rifle Association (NRA),” the ad reads, attributing the statement to Romney and the source as the Boston Globe.

“I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose,” the ad continues, sourcing a debate Romney participated in during his 2002 campaign for Massachusetts governor.

The Romney campaign hit back, calling it a “dishonest attack ad.”

On Wednesday, an NBC/Marist poll of Michigan voters showed Romney with 37-percent support and Santorum 35 percent. The state, along with Arizona, votes Tuesday. A new Quinnipiac poll also out Wednesday showed Santorum over Romney nationally 35 percent to 26 percent.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

Rick Perry to Have Surgery Friday to Repair Clavicle

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(AUSTIN, Texas) -- Texas Governor Rick Perry will have surgery Friday to repair his right clavicle, which did not heal after a 2009 bicycle accident, Catherine Frazier, Perry’s press secretary, confirmed to ABC News.

The 90-minute outpatient procedure will be conducted by Dr. Bruce Malone on Friday morning in Austin. It will involve one incision, which will be roughly three inches in length, and require the placement of a contoured plate.

The Texas governor will return to his home Friday afternoon.

Perry, who dropped out of the presidential race last month, had spinal fusion surgery, along with an injection of his own adult stem cells, in early July, just one month prior to announcing his bid for the White House. In the final months of his campaign, Perry admitted the back surgery impacted his performance in a negative way.

Perry endorsed Newt Gingrich when he suspended his presidential campaign last month and appeared in the spin room on behalf of Gingrich at the CNN debate in Mesa, Ariz., on Wednesday evening.

Perry is an avid athlete who runs multiple times a week and has participated in triathlons in the past.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

Marco Rubio, Mormon-Turned-Catholic

Joe Raedle/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Marco Rubio has something in common with Mitt Romney: religion.

The young Tea Party senator, who some have speculated could be on Mitt Romney’s short list of potential running mates, was baptized into the Mormon church when he was 8 and “remained active in the faith for a number of years,” attending LDS youth groups and walking to church most Sundays because his mother didn’t drive, BuzzFeed reports.

Rubio left Mormonism to become a Catholic “a few years later,” and had his first Communion when he was 13, in 1984, the Florida senator’s spokesman told the website.

Romney’s faith has occasionally been a topic of discussion in the Republican primary. Many Americans are unfamiliar with Mormonism, a Christian religion that has been called a cult by a pastor who endorsed Rick Perry and even by Romney’s chief rival, Rick Santorum.

The revelation muddies the prospects of Rubio’s getting the vice presidential nod from Romney. Though many conservatives love Rubio — he overwhelmingly won a straw poll for vice presidential nominee at an annual gathering of conservatives in Washington this month — the bottom of the ticket is often used for balancing a variety of attributes.

BuzzFeed says that its questions to Rubio’s aides about his religion “appear to have sent them into frantic damage-control mode.” The Miami Herald published a blog mentioning Rubio’s Mormon roots just before Rubio’s spokesman called the website to confirm the story. The spokesman said Rubio plans to write about his Mormon faith in a book.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

Obama Boasts to Latinos: ‘I’ve Got Another Five Years Coming Up’

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza(MIAMI) -- President Obama said his failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform during his first term shouldn’t disillusion Hispanic voters who supported him in 2008. “I’ve got another five years,” Obama boasted to the Spanish-language radio network Univision in an interview that aired Thursday.

“We’re going to get this done. And absolutely, we have strong support in the Latino community because they’ve seen what we’ve been working on,” he said.

Obama made the comments during a phone interview with host Eddie “Piolin” Sotelo taped Wednesday ahead of Obama's trip to Hispanic-heavy Florida today for a speech on the economy and three campaign fundraisers.

“Unfortunately, the Republican side, which used to at least give lip service to immigration reform, now they’ve gone completely to a different place,” Obama said, “and have shown themselves unwilling to talk at all about any sensible solutions to this issue, and we’re going to have to just keep up the pressure until they act.”

Obama did not mention the failure of the Democratically-controlled Congress of acting on immigration reform legislation during the first two years of his term or opposition from within his own party to a path to legal status for some of the nation’s 12 million illegal immigrants.

“So far, we haven’t seen any of the Republican candidates even support immigration reform. In fact, their leading candidate said he would veto even the Dream Act, much less comprehensive immigration reform,” Obama said referring to GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney. “So the choice at the presidential level will not be that difficult.”

Obama won 67 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008 to John McCain’s 32 percent. Recent polls show approval of Obama has slid significantly since 2008, though he remains favored nationally in hypothetical general election match-ups with Republican candidates.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

Arlen Specter on GOP Debate Reference: ‘Leave Me Out of It’

United States Senate(WASHINGTON) -- Arlen Specter didn’t watch last night’s GOP debate, but he definitely heard about it.

The former senator from Pennsylvania was briefly mentioned on the stage in Arizona as Mitt Romney blamed his chief rival, Rick Santorum, for his 2004 endorsement of the senator. In a vain attempt to save his job, Spector became a Democrat and voted for President Obama’s controversial health care plan, which is the center of 27 state lawsuits on constitutional grounds.

Specter said Thursday that he’s happy to take credit for “ObamaCare” -- but that he doesn’t understand why Romney mentioned him in the first place.

“There are a lot more important things to discuss than Arlen Specter,” the former senator told ABC News. “I don’t care if he brings me up. I just think there are more important things to do than talk about me.”

Romney’s line of attack was his way of turning around the health care argument that Santorum has used against the former governor -- that the health program Romney signed into law in Massachusetts became a model for President Obama’s health care plan. Romney said last night that Santorum’s endorsement of Specter in 2004, when they were both Republicans, is “the reason we have ObamaCare.”

“If you had not supported him, if we had said ‘no’ to Arlen Specter, we would not have ObamaCare,” Romney said. “So don’t look at me. Take a look in the mirror.”

Santorum defended his endorsement by saying that Specter told him in a “conversation” that if Santorum supported him, Specter would vote for President Bush’s judicial nominees in his powerful role on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “He said, ‘I’ll support the president’s nominees as chairman,’ ” Santorum told Romney.

But Specter said he “never” made a deal with Santorum. He said Santorum’s defense wasn’t appropriate though it was, “equal to the attack” by Romney.

“I think in these debates, it’s standard to disregard the relevant or important things and bring in the kitchen sink, anything that comes to mind,” Specter said.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

Romney Pounces on Santorum for ‘Voting Against His Principles’

EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images(PHOENIX) -- Mitt Romney, debuting a new line of attack, seized on GOP challenger Rick Santorum’s admission during Wednesday’s night’s debate that he had voted “against his principles” during his tenure in Washington.

“Now who watched the debate last night? It was kind of fun. I enjoyed it,” said Romney in a speech to the Associated Builders and Contractors National Board Meeting Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix. “It was kind of an interesting night. I didn’t expect what happened. What happened was we saw in this case Sen. Santorum explain most of the night why he did or voted for things he disagreed with.

“You know I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a politician explain in so many ways why it was he voted against his principles,” said Romney. “I can tell you one thing if I’m president of the United States I will abide by my principles and my team will be the people of the United States of America.

“And he talked about this as being taking one for the team. I wonder which team he was taking it for,” said Romney, sparking laughter from the crowd gathered in a hotel ballroom. “My team is the American people, not the insiders in Washington, and I’ll fight for the people of America.

During Wednesday night’s CNN debate in Mesa, Ariz., Santorum said supporting “No Child Left Behind” was “against the principles” he believed in.

“I have to admit, I voted for that,” said Santorum. “It was against the principles I believed in, but, you know, when you’re part of the team, sometimes you take one for the team, for the leader, and I made a mistake,” said Santorum. “You know, politics is a team sport, folks. And sometimes you’ve got to rally together and do something.”

Romney, who spoke at what is expected to be his final event in Arizona before the state’s primary on Tuesday, continued his efforts to paint Santorum as a “Washington insider.”

“He explained, for instance, why it was he voted against for the repeal of right to work laws, again, saying that was against his principle, but he did it for the team,” said Romney. “He explained why he voted to protect Davis-Bacon. He explained why he voted to raise the debt ceiling five times without compensating cuts in federal spending. He explained why it was he voted to fund Planned Parenthood, even though that was against his principles. He explained why he voted for No Child Left Behind even though that was against his principles. He explained why he voted for the Bridge to Nowhere even though that was against his principles.”

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

Obama Michigan TV Ad Jabs Romney on Controversial Auto Bailout

JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Just days before the Michigan GOP primary, the Obama campaign has taken a swipe at former Gov. Mitt Romney in a new TV ad that contrasts the president’s support for a 2009 bailout of Detroit-based GM and Chrysler with Romney’s opinion that they should go through bankruptcy without taxpayer help.

“When a million jobs were on the line,” the narrator says of the 2008 financial crisis that consumed the automakers, “every Republican candidate turned their back.”

“Even said ‘Let Detroit go bankrupt,'” flashing Romney’s face and the headline from his November 2008 op-ed in the New York Times.  (It should be noted that Romney never said those exact words; they were affixed to his op-ed by a Times editor.)

Democrats have made the financial rescue the centerpiece of their campaign in Michigan, hammering Romney for weeks in an effort to undermine support for him in a state where automakers and their suppliers are the largest employers.

Romney said he wanted a “managed bankruptcy,” whereby the companies would have been restructured without taxpayer funds.  Many experts, however, doubt they could have survived without the advance aid.

The Obama administration claims the infusion of more than $40 billion in government cash to keep the companies afloat saved more than a million jobs and led to more than 200,000 jobs created at the companies since June 2009. His critics doubt a million jobs would have been lost, and argue bond holders would have been able to recover their investments had a bankruptcy would have been allowed to proceed.

GM reported last week a record profit for 2011 and reassumed the mantle of the number one automaker in the world.  The company also said its 47,500 union workers would receive $7,000 each in shared profits -- the largest sum ever.

The gains, however, have come at a cost to taxpayers.

Chrysler has paid back only $10.6 of $12.5 billion received from the government under Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, according to figures provided by the White House.

GM has repaid $26 billion to date, after receiving $13.4 billion under Bush and $36.1 billion under Obama.  The Treasury Department continues to own 500 million shares of GM stock, or roughly 32 percent of the company.  The price of those shares will determine how much taxpayers will recoup or lose, if and when the government sells.

The new Obama ad, the campaign’s second of the 2012 cycle, will run in four Michigan markets -- Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing and Flint, an official said.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio