GLENN: All right. So Barack Obama now says he's going to bankrupt the coal industry. His campaign immediately -- I mean, we have the audio of him saying it. The campaign says no, no, no, that's crazy, that's just, that's a phantom argument. That's what he said! In fact, he said his policies will make electricity costs skyrocket. That's what he said. But he's doing it for global warming. But now it's just, you pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Well, if you look at all the policies and where this economy is headed in the first place, what happens if Barack Obama becomes President of the United States? We welcome back to the program Governor Mitt Romney. How are you, Mitt?
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: I'm terrific, thank you.
GLENN: Good. Boy, we have just -- I mean, it is amazing to me all the things the media has just dropped the ball on. Now we find out over the weekend that Barack Obama is going to put the coal industry out of business.
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: You know, it's not just the coal industry. If you put the coal industry out of business, it, of course, represents about 80% of the electric power we create. How are we going to get the electricity necessary to power these electric cars we're so excited about. And how is our economy going to run if we're not using the resource we have in this country. We've got to have clean coal. We've got to have nuclear, we've got to have offshore drilling and Barack Obama is toeing the line of the extreme left wing environmentalists that will frankly close our economy and make it impossible for America to compete. It's a job-killing program.
GLENN: As a businessman, Mitt, you look at the policies of Barack Obama and you look at those policies. Murdock today came out and said between the coal and the unions and everything else, this is just, his policies are going to destroy the economy.
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: You know, he is out there selling the message of change and everybody wants to get better. So change sounds good. But the problem is in all of my political career and in my business life I've looked at a lot of policies. I've never seen a combination of policies so designed to slow an economy and kill jobs as those that Barack Obama's put forward.
GLENN: So then why would somebody like Warren Buffett, because he keeps playing the Warren Buffett card. Warren Buffett's on my side, Voelker is on my side.
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, Warren Buffett is a guy who has enough money to buy the entire planet and Warren Buffett has a lot of friends among the Hollywood folks and I'm sure Warren Buffett is genuine in his support but, you know, I'd love to sit down with Warren Buffett. My guess is I'd be able to convince Warren Buffett. I don't think he's given any thought whatsoever. My guess is Warren Buffett has never even heard of this card check bill that basically says they are going to impose unions through intimidation on small businesses across this country. You are going to kill the engine of new job growth in this country with that proposal and it hasn't even been talked about in this presidential campaign. So some of us who do know what Barack Obama's up to are convinced that, for instance, his position on coal, we just heard about that last night for the first time. I don't think Warren Buffett has heard the whole picture.
GLENN: When you talk about the union thing, I've been looking back historically speaking. In 1937 the Supreme Court allowed the unions to really have a monopoly in businesses and we went into a depression within a depression. This is being compared to that kind of a move, that this will really impact business. Can you explain to the average person that this is not hype, this is something real?
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, I actually think this union effort, this card check effort, and basically what it is is that every business in America right now, if the union wants to unionize your business, one of the voters -- or it should be the workers get a chance to vote and to have a secret ballot. The Democrats and Barack Obama want to take away the secret ballot so that people don't get a chance to vote on this. Instead they can go house to house and intimidate people and make them sign a card and if they get half the workers to sign a card, automatically are unionized. Well, now a small business with let's say 20 people, they have now got the Teamsters in there telling them how they have to run their business and they are in a setting where they have got to get labor lawyers telling them what things they can do and they can't do. This will have the most massive impact on America's competitiveness on anything that's happened the last 50 years, and I'm very troubled by it, and it hasn't even been spoken about in his presidential campaign because it's hard to explain.
GLENN: Well, why do you suppose the media is so in bed with Barack Obama to levels that we have never, ever seen before?
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, you know, I frankly think that a lot of the media, of course, have their own feelings and their own -- I mean, it's a bias, of course. Some are biased positive, some biased negative. Some Republican, some Democrat. People have a right to express their own view. That's the nature of a free press but, you know, you've got a lot of liberals in the media and so they love Barack Obama. They love what he talks about. But I don't think they have any experience whatsoever, that is I'm talking about liberals in the media, any experience in the job world, in creating jobs. A lot of them, by the way, are seeing their jobs go away and they hope Barack Obama will, you know, change the law. So, you know, you can't take away their jobs.
GLENN: There's a piece of video now on the Drudge Report from Congressman Nadler and he is talking about how Barack Obama did not have the political courage -- now, this is a supporter of Obama.
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Yeah.
GLENN: He didn't have the political courage to leave his church. I mean, I haven't seen any political courage. When our back is up against a wall, you know, internationally speaking with Iran, with Russia, with Venezuela, with these countries that become more and more dangerous the more oil collapses, isn't political courage something that we should see demonstrated in our President before we need it on a global scale?
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: You know, it's one of the things that's most troubling to me is that the Democratic party has selected a nominee who has not been tested. He's an intelligent guy. That you can tell. He speaks well. He reads the TelePrompTer well. But he has not been tested under fire. He's not been tested as a leader. He's not been tested to see if he can work across the aisle. And frankly, you know, he may do just fine if he's elected or he may be a disaster, but we just don't know and that's why in the world that I'm used to, you hire people, you select people based upon the things they've accomplished, not just what they say they are going to accomplish. And it is very frightening to a lot of people that you'd elect as the nominee of the Democratic party somebody who has not yet had the opportunity to actually lead.
GLENN: You know, the problem for a lot of people, Mitt, is they look at this candidate for the Republicans, John McCain, and they say, "Well, okay, he's much better than Barack Obama but I'm still -- but he's still for a massive cap and trade." I mean, you've got Barack Obama. He's going to cripple coal, and John McCain's isn't that bad but it's still a cap and trade program. So they look at it and say, okay, what is the difference here? And I know there are, but, you know, how would you address the cap and trade on the day where everybody's paying attention to coal?
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, as you know, there were a number of places in the primary campaign where I disagree with John McCain and his cap and trade proposal is one of them. You know, I would hope to be able to convince him that before you put in place a cap and trade program on the U.S. that there must be participation by countries like China. It does not make sense to me to have any form of unilateral disarmament if you want to negotiate with somebody and you feel it's important to bring down global CO2 emissions, then China has to be part of the picture. And if we go out there and put a burden on our own industry and they don't put a burden on theirs, you'll just kill jobs here. So it's a place where, you know, I would endeavor to convince my own candidate that we can do a better job.
GLENN: There was a story today, and I haven't had a chance to fully read it yet. It was talking about the protectionist policies of the Democrats coming in and how that they are just, they are going to be emboldened and start to enact some of the protectionist policies that they have been chomping at the bit for for the last few years and been really talking about. And quite honestly, Mitt, you know, I haven't read the story in its total yet and I know when I read protectionist policies again, I go back to the Great Depression and say that's one of the big problems that we had. What are the policies that you're seeing coming from this Democratic congress that they are chomping at the bit for that worry you?
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, the biggest, of course, is this card check. That worries me enormously. But then you hit on the second one. Protectionism sounds wonderful, which is the idea that we're going to protect our companies, our industry from foreign competition. But the other side of protectionism is that the people we trade with are not entirely stupid. If we say we're not going to let their goods and services in, they won't let our goods and services in. It works both ways. And one out of six jobs in this country is associated with sending goods and services to other countries. Export, in other words. And so you start talking protectionism, we're going to have an enormous job loss on the part of entrepreneurial businesses. Now, yeah, maybe some of the steel companies and auto companies would feel better for a while but not for very long because you put protectionist barriers up, it's going to hurt us and it's going to hurt everybody else.
GLENN: This is probably the last time that I'll get to speak to you for a while and the election is tomorrow. What is the one thing that you feel if people would just hear, they would understand the importance of this election and their vote and which one to vote for.
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, the country's going to take a new direction as of Wednesday morning and if we elect Barack Obama, we're going to take a sharp left turn following Europe. And just look at the experience of Europe over the last 30 years. No job growth, high unemployment, anemic overall economic growth. It is the wrong course for America. And a protectionist, government-managed economy is not a successful economy. The American path is the far superior way to go. We're going through a crisis right now. The prime mortgage business which is nutty that it has this big impact that it does but my goodness, let's not walk down the path of Europe. Things there are a lot worse than they are here.
GLENN: All right. Mitt, thank you very much. We'll talk to you again, governor.
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Thanks, Glenn. Good to be with you.
GLENN: You bet. Bye-bye.
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