Shock: New York Daily News Endorses Romney After Picking Obama 4 Years Ago

The New York Daily News endorsed Mitt Romney on Saturday, a major switch for the metropolitan paper that backed President Barack Obama four years ago:

Four years ago, the Daily News endorsed Obama, seeing a historic figure whose intelligence, political skills and empathy with common folk positioned him to build on the small practical experience he would bring to the world’s toughest job. We valued Obama’s pledge to govern with bold pragmatism and bipartisanship.

The hopes of those days went unfulfilled.

[...]The trend over the Obama years: Goodbye to middle- and high-income jobs in New York City; hello to positions that pay less than $45,000 a year.

Recovery from the disaster that Obama inherited was going to take time. But four years is a long, long slog. Had the President guided a typical upswing, America would by now have regained essentially all its lost jobs. At his present pace, Obama would reach that milestone in the third year of a second term.

The regrettable truth is that Obama built a record of miscalculations and missed opportunities.

[...]

Romney’s approach is the stronger.

Critically, he has tailored his policies to create jobs, jobs, jobs.

[...]

No, Romney’s not perfect. His overall immigration policy falls below comprehensive reform, and he’s no friend of gun control. But, under these circumstances, growing the economy takes precedence.

Offering a rosy vision of a country already on the rise, Obama argues that he would lead a resurgence by staying the course. He posits that spending in areas such as education and clean energy would be beneficial, and he sees raising taxes on high-income earners as key to “balanced” deficit reduction. Each on its own is attractive, but the whole comes up short.

The presidential imperative of the times is to energize the economy and get deficits under control to empower the working and middle classes to again enjoy the fruits of an ascendant America.

So The News is compelled to stand with Romney.

The Daily News is one of the largest newspapers in the country, and the third-largest in New York behind the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.