BETTENDORF - Former New York Gov. George Pataki criticized Democrats on the health care, the economy, taxes and foreign policy Tuesday, while urging local Republicans to work to win next year's midterm elections.

Pataki was the featured speaker Tuesday night at the Scott County Republican Party's Ronald Reagan Dinner in Bettendorf, where a slate of four GOP gubernatorial candidates also were on hand.

Pataki laced into the pending health-care proposals, the $787 billion stimulus package and complained President Barack Obama spent too much time trying to mend relations with foreign leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinjad.

"We are making wrong decision after wrong decision," he said. "President Obama, think about President Reagan. It was never America's strength that created problems in the world; it's America's weakness that creates problems in the world."

Pataki's trip to Iowa has fueled speculation he might run for president in 2012, but he declined to say whether he's considering it.

Pataki was New York's governor for 12 years, leaving office in 2006. He flirted with a presidential bid in 2008 but opted not to run.

"I think the people are ready for change, but not this type of change," Pataki said in an interview with the Quad-City Times, a sister publication of The Courier, before the event.

Norm Sterzenbach, executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party, responded: "Governor Pataki, like the Republican Party itself, is known more for what he is against - Democratic attempts to move his state forward on health care, education and the environment - than what he is for. He will fit right in with the (Iowa) Republican gubernatorial candidates."