CHICAGO/DES MOINES, IOWA, May 25: After weeks of painting Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney as a job-slashing corporate raider, President Barack Obama and his re-election campaign are broadening their attack to include Romney’s record as Massachusetts governor, arguing his policies hurt the state.
Obama, in an impassioned campaign speech in the battleground state of Iowa on Thursday night, foreshadowed that shift in strategy when he said Romney had made his business experience the centerpiece of his candidacy but ‘doesn’t really talk about what he did in Massachusetts.’
The move, described by campaign officials, marks a change from the campaign’s recent main focus on Romney’s time as a private equity executive at Bain Capital aimed at casting him as more concerned with the wealthy than the middle class.
The Obama team’s approach on Romney’s work at Bain has faced some criticism. Some saw it as hypocritical at a time when the campaign was seeking donations from private equity executives.
And while the attacks have been part of a strategy to define Romney as out of touch with most Americans, the presumptive Republican nominee has been rising in recent polls, most of which show the race in a dead heat.
Despite that, Obama pressed his assault on Romney’s private equity background in his toughest terms so far and mocked him for saying ‘corporations are people,’ a comment he made last August while campaigning in Iowa.
Obama also rebutted Romney’s recent claim that the Democratic president had created a ‘prairie fire of debt’ since taking office, dismissing that as a ‘cow pie of distortion.’
‘Governor Romney has made his experience as a financial CEO the entire rationale for his candidacy,’ Obama told a boisterous rally of about 2,500 people inside a barn like building at the state fairgrounds in Des Moines.
He suggested Romney did not want to remind voters of his credentials outside the corporate world ‘but he does talk about being a business guy.’
‘He says this gives him a special understanding of what it takes to create jobs and grow the economy – even if he’s unable to offer a single new idea about how to do that,’ Obama told the Iowa crowd, who booed loudly when Romney’s name was mentioned.
‘So I think it’s a good idea to look at the way he sees the economy,’ the president continued. ‘He sincerely believes that if CEOs and wealthy investors are getting rich, then the wealth is going to trickle down and the rest of us are going to do well, too. And he is wrong.’
Though Obama did not explicitly assail Romney’s record as governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007, campaign officials made clear this would be their new focus in the weeks ahead.
ROMNEY CAMPAIGN PUSHES BACK
By broadening its attack, the Obama re-election team will make the case that Romney’s economic philosophies have pervaded his career and would damage the country.
Romney’s campaign quickly pushed back.
‘By the end of this year, President Obama will have presided over a record-shattering four consecutive trillion-dollar deficits and added an historic amount to our national debt. Our children will be footing the bill for his failed policies years from now,’ said Ryan Williams, a Romney spokesman.
‘It’s as if he’s forgotten that he’s been president for nearly four years and has a record to defend,’ Williams said.
(agencies)
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