In New Hampshire, Romney follows Obama’s ’08 trail

DERRY, New Hampshire—Mitt Romney attracted his biggest crowd on the campaign trail in weeks, as more than 600 people showed up for an early Saturday morning rally here in the gym of a local private high school.

For weeks, Romney has been campaigning in cities where the President Obama spoke four years ago as an attempt to highlight what he believes is the president's failed record.

Flanked by two key surrogates—South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte—Romney delivered what has become his standard stump speech, assailing what he describes as Obama's lofty promises, mentioning almost an aside the president had once campaigned at Pinkerton Academy, on the same stage he now occupied.

"At this academy four years ago—I think maybe even four years ago to the day—candidate Barack Obama was here, speaking, and he said he was going to bring 'big things' to America," Romney told the crowd. "Well, he did, but they came with great big price tags, and they didn't work out so well. Big things, bad things, expensive things!"

Indeed, Obama did campaign at Pinkerton on Jan. 6, 2008, where more than 2,000 people showed up to hear the message of "hope" and "change" that catapulted him to the presidency. But what Romney didn't mention is that he also campaigned at Pinkerton four years ago—on Jan. 5, 2008—with a re-tooled stump speech after his loss in Iowa that seemed modeled after Obama's same message.

"There were a couple of people whose prospects coming out of that election I think took a big hit, and it was a message I read into those votes, and that is Hillary Clinton, who's been around Washington forever, and John McCain, who's been there even longer, those two were handily rejected by people who had messages of change, with new faces and new ideas," Romney said at the time, according to the Boston Globe. He had higher hopes for "Gov. Huckabee and myself, people from the outside," and even mentioned Obama. "The American people recognize we're not going to change Washington by sending back the same old faces and just have them change chairs. We have to have new people."

Today, Romney was talking less about "change" and more about "restoration"—his chief argument for his candidacy being that Obama has set America back by enacting policies that have racked up trillions of dollars in debt.

"Those who would change America—The president has said he would 'fundamentally transform America'— [that's] going in the wrong direction," Romney said today. "The right course is to bring America back to the principles that made us who we are. Our love of freedom, our passion for the Constitution, the patriotism we have for this land, and our conviction that this should be a land of opportunity… I will restore to America those principles."

Romney's stop this morning had the look and feel of a Republican frontrunner. Scores of media turned out to cover the candidate's speech, and there was a more notable security presence than at previous events, with scores of local police officers mingling in the crowd and outside the venue.

At one point, protestors interrupted Romney's remarks, prompting supporters to show them down with chants of, "Mitt! Mitt! Mitt!" On stage, the candidate beamed. "I love freedom," he declared.