For Romney, road to White House runs through nation’s Rust Belt

Mitt Romney is trying to do something that Sen. John McCain, the Republican Party’s 2008 presidential nominee, could not — shore up enough support among the rural, blue-collar voters in such Rust Belt states as Pennsylvania and Ohio to win the White House.

The former Massachusetts governor chased after those voters over the Father's Day weekend as part of a six-state bus tour in which he bought a meatball hoagie at a gas station outside Philadelphia. He also tested the axiom that the way to a person’s heart is through...