Hudson & Fournier: Catholic Countdown to Election 2012, Day 21. Questions We Wish Romney Would Ask Obama and Vice Versa

We urge both Romney and Obama to put their guiding moral, political, and spiritual values on the table, in full view of the American people.

If we, by some act of divine or journalistic fiat, were asked not merely to pose questions to the candidates but to script the questions the candidates would ask each other, here are five questions we would put on their respective  teleprompters

P>WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic online) - The first presidential debate only indirectly revealed the differences in worldview between the two candidates. Romney won the debate not because of any inspiring vision of America's future but because of his greater command of the facts.

We urge both Romney and Obama to put their guiding moral, political, and spiritual values on the table, in full view of the American people.

If we, by some act of divine or journalistic fiat, were asked not merely to pose questions to the candidates but to script the questions the candidates would ask each other, here are five questions we would put on their respective  teleprompters:

Obama to Romney:

Gov. Romney, you've been critical of "Obamacare" and have promised to revoke it if you are elected. As a governor, you were a pioneer in achieving universal health care for the citizens of Massachusetts, for the very humanitarian reasons that I have espoused throughout the healthcare debate. Why would you want to revoke legislation that makes national what you instituted at the state level?

Romney to Obama:

Mr. President, long before the federal government played any role in health care or education, private hospitals, clinics, schools, and colleges were created and paid for by people of faith -- Catholic, Methodist, Episcopalian, Jewish, Quakers; the list of faiths that built the educational and health care infrastructure of our nation is long. Now your administration is telling the largest group of these faith based hospitals, the Catholic institutions and organizations, that after 200 years of service to all Americans they have a choice -- either restrict services to Catholics alone or begin providing insurance for contraception, abortion inducing drugs and sterilization. Do you harbor any regret for forcing Catholics to violate their consciences in this way, especially given the fact that their hospitals have been serving citizens, immigrants, and the poor long before the federal government invested in health care? What about your claim to respect the Rights set forth in the First Amendment to the US Constitution, such as the Rights to Life and the Free Exercise of Religion?

Obama to Romney:

Gov. Romney, I'm not the only person in the room who thinks you have changed a lot since you led the state of Massachusetts. Not only have you distanced yourself from your own goal of universal health care, you suddenly announced you're anti-choice after insisting on your support for a woman's right to choose when you ran for office in your home state. As governor, you were a Republican with a large heart and compassion for women who have to make difficult choices. My question is: Why did you embrace these extreme positions that not only exclude so many Americans from adequate health care but also criminalizes a woman's most personal decision?

Romney to Obama:

Mr. President, you often refer to your Christian faith as providing the basic values that guide your politics. My question is this: You have described Rev. Jeremiah Wright, your pastor for some 20 years, as your "spiritual advisor" and the minister who married you and Michelle and baptized your children. Given that Rev. Wright considers Louis Farrakhan, a racial separatist and an anti-Semite, as "one of the 20th and 21st century giants of the African-American religious experience," you must have been aware of this admiration. How were you able to consider him a suitable spiritual advisor and attend his church with your family for 20 years?

Obama to Romney:

Gov. Romney, you now speak regularly of your concern for those whose income level places them in what is called the middle class. In our first meeting you even presented your economic plan as geared toward helping them through a tax plan which sounded very different from what I have heard from you and your advisors in the past.If you are now so concerned, why are you pushing for tax cuts for the multi-millionaires and billionaires instead of equalizing the tax burden based on a fair share and giving people a fair shake? Where is your concern for the poorest among us? What is your economic plan for them as you propose cutting our Nations social safety net programs?

Romney to Obama:

Mr. President, why do you engage in class warfare, pitting our people against one another based on their income, instead of calling us to unity and solidarity? What happened to the public servant who in 2004 reminded us of our National Motto, "E pluribus unum. Out of many,one" We still remember the words you spoke that night, and I quote " there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America - there's the United States of America." You seem to have joined the camp of those who seek to divide us. What is your specific plan to bring us together and help all Americans to rise above their limiting circumstances in the greatest Nation on the earth?

Obama to Romney:

Gov. Romney, while you were leading Bain Capital you practiced your 'turn-around" business style which your campaign now claims will be applied on a national scale to allegedly fix our economic problems if you are elected President. Do you intend to shut down our factories, mills and mines and outsource those millions of jobs overseas on a national scale? You claim to be able to add 12 million new jobs to our economy. Please explain to me and to the American people how anything in your record demonstrates that your promise to add so many jobs is more than just one more empty campaign promise. 

Romney to Obama:

Mr. President, your administration has failed to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, a Federal Law, and refuse to enforce it. In fact, you have directed the Justice Department to actively seek to have the Federal Courts set it aside. Over and over again the American people have affirmed that marriage is between one man and one woman and that the two parent marriage bound family is the firm foundation of every civil society. Why do you oppose Marriage and seek to restructure civil society by making other relationships between persons its legal equivalent? Why do you paint all those who defend marriage as against homosexual persons or somehow bigoted because they stand for the institution upon which our society - and other societies - is founded? 

Obama to Romney:

Gov. Romney, what do you have against hard working teachers who have formed unions to defend their right to collectively bargain? Why do you favor policies which will have the effect of dismantling or diminishing our public school system, replacing it with privately owned and run schools?

Romney to Obama:

Mr. President, why do you not recognize that parents are the first teachers of their children and the family is the first school house? Why, with all of your talk about concern for poor and middle class families, do you not favor giving them the same choice that you and the First Lady have of sending their children to the school of their own choice?

If the presidential candidates were willing to pose and answer these types of questions, all of us would have a clearer idea of what kind of nation each would have us to become. As you can see, the list could go on. There so many more important questions which really should be asked this evening.

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