Romney on D.C. ethics, “sanctuary cities”

Former Massachusetts Governor/GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney bought about 275 people breakfast at the Machine Shed Restaurant in Urbandale, Iowa, this morning.  You can listen to Romney’s speech (plus Q&A) and read the Radio Iowa story here.

Romney held a news conference afterwards (you can listen to the.mp3 by clicking here ). Romney was asked whether he was specifically targeting Alaska Senator Ted Stevens with his lament about the bad ethics in Washington (short answer:  nope). Romney was asked about his statement that discretionary federal grants should be taken away from cities that become "sanctuaries" for illegal immigrants. Romney was asked about the Minneapolis bridge collapse, too, and he talked about the Big Dig in his answer.

Romney:  "We were all shocked by what happened in Minneapolis, but for me it was a reminder of what had happened in my own state about a year ago, just about a year ago when a one-ton ceiling panel collapsed and killed a woman who was driving through the Big Dig and in that case we put together a process to assure the public and assure ourselves that the system was safe and we brought in forensic engineers and did a stem to stern review of entire tunnel project.  That’s obviously within the scope of reason, meaning you can evaluate one tunnel project.  How you evaluate all the bridges and all of the tunnels in America, I’m not sure, but it certainly calls into question the process that we’ve employed in some cases and you know, my heart goes out to the families that have lost loved ones and I’m also thinking about Governor Pawlenty.  I know the challenge he has now is to make sure that the bridges in his state are structurally sound and I know the process that we carried out.  It does make you wonder what happened and these kind of terrible tragedies occur and there are firms that are, if you will, forensic engineering firms that help you understand why something like this happened, but until someone like that is involved to assess the nature or the cause of this collapse, it has to make everybody in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, in the country, just a little more nervous."