Marathon Pundit: Another flip: Illinois' Daily Herald endorses Romney

The Daily Herald, which is based in Chicago's northwestern suburbs and is the newspaper with the third-largest readership in Illinois, endorsed Barack Obama four years ago. This time the DH--which last endorsed a Republican in 2000--is in Mitt Romney's corner. The paper zeroed in on Obama's ability to work with congressional Republicans in its endorsement of Romney.

Romney, on the other hand, governed successfully in Massachusetts with a legislature that was almost totally controlled by the opposition party. He's proven he can work across the aisle.

He's proven capable in all that he has tried. He’s proven that he can run businesses and create jobs. He’s been successful in all walks of life.

"We don't have to settle for what we're going through," Romney said during one of the debates. “We don’t have to settle for gasoline at four bucks. We don’t have to settle for unemployment at a chronically high level. We don't have to settle for 47 million people on food stamps. We don't have to settle for 50 percent of kids coming out of college not able to get work. We don’t have to settle for 23 million people struggling to find a good job."

We know these are political stump messages. Four years ago, something similar could have come from candidate Barack Obama in his politics of hope oratory. And while we need inspiration, what is needed more than ever are bipartisan solutions to these profound issues of our times. We believe a new approach, steeped in moderation and, yes, compromise with the opposition is the only path to a better day.