Amazing: The Detroit News Endorses Romney

The writing on the wall is visible even from Detroit. (Remember Detroit?) Imagine what would have been said, just a few ago, if someone had suggested that a Detroit—Detroit! The place that used to makes cars . . .—imagine the reaction if someone had suggested that a newspaper in Detroit would come out and endorse Mitt Romney, not Barack “Mr. Auto Bailout” Obama.

But that’s exactly what the Detroit News has done.  In an editorial titled “Mitt Romney for President,” the paper lays out the case. Two key passages:

President Barack Obama came into office in 2009 riding a wave of hope and change. Unfortunately, he has not delivered on the nation’s yearning for change nor on the specific promises he made to fix what is broken. The president is asking the country to be patient, but his plan isn’t producing results that would merit more patience, and the president hasn’t spelled out what he would do differently in a second term.

Not even Mitt Romney could put it better than that.

As the News goes on to observe, hope and change are still what Americans seek, it’s just that they are disenchanted with Barack Obama’s failure to deliver either. Mitt ROmney has a much more credible, and much less partisan, vision on offer.

The paper dilates on some specifics of Romney’s plan—and pace Obama, there are plenty of specifics—but it also makes this thoughtful observation: “America,” its editorialist writes,  “is locked in a struggle over what it will be as a mature nation.” Got that right. And then there’s this:

A country built on rugged individualism finds itself increasingly under the thumb of a federal government that is ever expanding its reach into the lives of its citizens.

Obama has proved himself a disciple of the doctrine that for every problem there’s a government solution.

Romney, by contrast, embraces individual initiative and entrepreneurship. He would turn back the encroachment of the bureaucracy into the private sector.

Romney would replace the heavy hand of government with the invisible hand of a rational marketplace working to produce broad prosperity.

“Broad Prosperity.” The beneficent working of “a rational marketplace.” “Individual initiative.” “The private sector.” “Rugged individualism.” These are good things. They’re what Romney plausibly promises to deliver. They’re also things Obama loathes. The choice is clear. Even Detroit sees that.