Photo by Randy Cauthron Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney introduces his son, Josh, who is traveling the state with his wife and three children. The former Massachusetts governor made a campaign stop at the Clay County Regional Events Center in Spencer.

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney went after Democrats and terrorists as he hit on some stump speech themes during a campaign stop Friday in Spencer.

Romney was beginning a two-day trip through western and northern Iowa, which continued Friday night in Okoboji and includes a morning stop today in Emmetsburg.

"These are critical times in America," Romney told a crowd of about 60 at the Clay County Regional Events Center. "America is, in some respects, at a point where we're going to change our course. That's going to happen because we face some real challenges. We're spending too much money and that's reaching crisis proportions. We're using too much foreign oil, our health care system isn't working for a lot of our citizens. We're under attack from jihadists who have as the intent the collapse of our nation and other nations. We're facing tougher competition from Asia than we've faces before and given all of those challenges we are going to change course -- we're going to have to."

Romney also went after the field of Democrats in the race and perceived frontrunner Hillary Clinton in particular.

"The Democrats tend to look at the lessons of a Europe -- of a time past -- where Europe believed in big government, big taxes, big brother and that very course led them to be a series of nations not as strong as they could have been," Romney said.

Romney touted the qualities of individual responsibility, individual initiatives and individual incentives found in the United States.

"That's helped make us the most powerful nation on earth," he said, before turning his attention to Clinton. "Her view is: We need to tax corporations more, those that could mean our jobs and need to tax the American people more. My view is: We need to tax people less. We need to kill the death tax once and for all and we also need to have a savings plan for people in this country."

He called for a special tax rate on interest, dividends and capital gains for people with middle incomes, who want to save money.

"The tax rate ought to be zero," he said. "Middle income people ought to save their money without having to pay taxes on it. I don't think it's fair that you pay taxes when you earn your money, taxes when you save your money and taxes when you die."

While in Denison, the former Massachusetts governor praised President Bush for enactment of the Patriot Act. Critics of the law contend that the government has invaded Americans' privacy using the newfound powers of the act, such as the Justice Department's authority on wiretapping.

"Our president, for all the criticism he receives, has kept America safe these last six years, and he has done it by: One pursuing the Patriot Act, which has given us the intelligence information we needed to find out who the bad guys were and get them out before they got us, and No. 2, when al-Qaida was calling America, he made sure someone here was listening," Romney said. "And No. 3 ... when terrorists were detained, were captured, he made sure we interrogated them."

Romney added that recent attacks planned in Britain by foreign medical professionals living there was "the face of horror." He repeated those statements as his campaign made its way north.

"Think about that -- doctors," he told his audience in Spencer. "These aren't some people from some far off place. They are people living in Great Britain who took this upon themselves. We haven't seen the face of horror like this in Europe in some respects since the horror of Hitler's concentration camps and Holocaust some years ago. Thank heavens we had a president who has been willing to do whatever he knew he could do to make sure we were kept safe."

In several stops, Romney stressed the importance of enforcing obscenity laws, getting tough on retailers who sell violent video games to kids and education to reduce the number of unwed mothers.

If someone uses the Web to sexually assault a child, he said there should be stiff consequences.

"I'll call it one strike and you're ours because I want to put them in jail for a long time and then put an ankle bracelet on them and a GPS transponder so that we know where they are for the rest of their lives," he said.

Romney noted his family's support and said 96 of his relatives planned to come attend the Ames Straw Poll on Aug. 11 to help out his campaign. He was introduced in Spencer by state Sen. David Johnson of Ocheyedan, his director for several counties in northwest Iowa.

Coverage of a campaign appearance earlier in the day was provided by the Associated Press.