Video: Mitt Romney demanded President Obama stop attacking his record at Bain Capital. In an interview with WAVY-TV, Obama called Romney “Mr. Fix-It for the economy” and said voters “want to know what is exactly his business experience.”
CINCINNATI — Just 10 days after wrapping up a bus tour of Ohio, President Obama returned to this crucial swing state Monday for a town hall in a heavily Republican area.
At Cincinnati’s Music Hall, where he also held a fundraiser, Obama continued to make appeals to the middle class by emphasizing his administration’s bailout of the U.S. auto industry and his proposal to extend the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class.
Obama vs. Romney poll: If the election were held today, whom registered voters say they would vote for.
More from PostPolitics
FACT CHECKER | Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) says White House officials were aware of the IRS program. What do we know?
Senators eager to support the massive bill say they hope to have an agreement by the end of Wednesday.
Edward Snowden splits the public, even as most support the surveillance program he revealed.
The president also kept up his attacks on Republican rival Mitt Romney by suggesting that the former Massachusetts governor supports limited taxing of U.S. corporations abroad that would encourage more jobs to flow overseas.
“We have not found a serious economic study that says Gov. Romney’s economic plan would actually create jobs, until today, I have to be honest,” Obama said, citing a Tax Notes report. “Today we found out there is a new study by non-partisan economists that says Gov. Romney’s economic plan would in fact create 800,000 jobs. There’s only one problem. The jobs wouldn’t be in America. . . . We don’t need a president who plans to ship more jobs overseas.”
Obama has proposed offering tax breaks to U.S. companies that bring jobs back to the United States.
The Obama campaign has put special emphasis on Ohio, which has emerged as a bellwether state whose voters have supported the winner in the past 10 presidential elections. Obama formally kicked off his reelection effort with a speech in Columbus in early May, and he delivered a lengthy economic address in Cleveland in June.
Though both sides believe the race will be tight, polls show Obama holding a small but steady advantage in Ohio and other swing states. His campaign has outspent Romney by $91 million to $23 million on television ads in those battlegrounds. Obama’s ads largely criticize Romney’s record as the former head of Bain Capital, a private equity firm that has come under scrutiny for investing in companies that helped send U.S. jobs offshore.
The Romney campaign, which is facing increased criticism from Republicans about its strategy, sent out a memo Monday morning that suggested that the attacks on Romney’s record were in fact falling flat and not moving the needle in terms of polling.
“President Obama’s campaign will never have a more substantial advertising advantage than it has had over the past few weeks, yet there is no evidence to suggest that the ballot has moved,” wrote Neil Newhouse, Romney’s pollster. “If throwing the kitchen sink at Gov. Romney while leveraging a two-to-one ad-spending advantage doesn’t move numbers for the President, that’s got to tell you something about the state of the electorate: Voters are frustrated with President Obama’s failure to keep his promises from the 2008 campaign and don’t truly believe the next four years will be any different from the last three and a half.”
Romney has defended his record, saying Bain created jobs during his tenure and that the firm invested in companies that helped outsource jobs only after Romney gave up day-to-day management in 1999, when he left to organize the winter Olympics in Utah.
The Post Most: PoliticsMost-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours
Loading...
Comments