Dems sharpen attack as GOP rallies behind Romney

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney speaks to an audi­ence dur­ing a cam­paign stop at a pan­cake break­fast Sun­day in Mil­wau­kee, Wis. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Steven Senne)

BETH FOUHY

STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

MILWAUKEE — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s admin­is­tra­tion launched a multi-pronged assault on Mitt Romney’s val­ues and for­eign pol­icy cre­den­tials Sun­day, while a fresh set of promi­nent Repub­li­cans ral­lied behind the GOP front-runner as the odds-on nom­i­nee, fur­ther signs the gen­eral elec­tion is over­tak­ing the pri­mary season.

A defi­ant Rick San­to­rum out­lined plans to leave Wis­con­sin the day before the state’s con­test Tues­day, an indi­ca­tion that the con­ser­v­a­tive favorite may be in retreat, his chances to stop Rom­ney rapidly dwindling.

“I think the chances are over­whelm­ing that (Rom­ney) will be our nom­i­nee,” Sen­ate Minor­ity Leader Mitch McConnell said Sun­day on CNN’s “State of the Union.” ”It seems to me we’re in the final phases of wrap­ping up this nom­i­na­tion. And most of the mem­bers of the Sen­ate Repub­li­can con­fer­ence are either sup­port­ing him, or they have the view that I do, that it’s time to turn our atten­tion to the fall cam­paign and begin to make the case against the pres­i­dent of the United States.”

Both Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton and Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden went after Rom­ney Sun­day, under­scor­ing the belief inside Obama’s Chicago re-election head­quar­ters that Rom­ney will — sooner than later — secure the right to face Obama this fall. Rom­ney largely agreed, telling a Madi­son, Wis., crowd Sun­day night that the nom­i­nee “will prob­a­bly be me.”

The Obama offi­cials’ involve­ment comes as both sides sharpen their gen­eral elec­tion strat­egy, per­haps weeks before the GOP con­test for­mally comes to an end.

“I think Gov. Romney’s a lit­tle out of touch,” Biden told CBS’ “Face the Nation” in an inter­view broad­cast Sun­day. “I can’t remem­ber a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in the recent past who seems not to under­stand, by what he says, what ordi­nary middle-class peo­ple are think­ing about and are con­cerned about.”

The line of attack is likely to play promi­nently in the Obama campaign’s gen­eral elec­tion nar­ra­tive. While Obama is a mil­lion­aire, Rom­ney would be among the nation’s wealth­i­est pres­i­dents ever elected. And he’s opened him­self to crit­i­cism through a series of missteps.

Rom­ney casu­ally bet a rival $10,000 dur­ing a pres­i­den­tial debate, noted that his wife dri­ves a “cou­ple of Cadil­lacs,” and lists own­ers of pro­fes­sional sports teams among his friends. His per­sonal tax records show invest­ments in the Cay­man Islands and a Swiss bank account.

Obama’s team on Sun­day also seized on Romney’s for­eign pol­icy inexperience.

Biden said Obama was “stat­ing the obvi­ous” when he told Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more lat­i­tude on mis­sile defense after the Novem­ber gen­eral elec­tion. The two pres­i­dents did not real­ize the exchange, dur­ing a meet­ing in Seoul, South Korea, last week­end, was being picked up by a microphone.

Rom­ney called it “alarm­ing” and part of a pat­tern of “breath­tak­ing weak­ness” with America’s foes. He asked what else Obama would be flex­i­ble on if he were to win a sec­ond term.

“Speak­ing of flex­i­ble, Gov. Romney’s a pretty flex­i­ble guy on his posi­tions,” Biden said. Romney’s GOP oppo­nents have accused the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor of “flip-flopping” on issues such as health care and abortion.

Clin­ton seized on Romney’s com­ment that Rus­sia is America’s “No. 1 geopo­lit­i­cal foe,” call­ing the state­ment “dated” and sug­gest­ing there were more press­ing mat­ters of con­cern in global affairs.

“I think it’s some­what dated to be look­ing back­wards instead of being real­is­tic about where we agree, where we don’t agree,” Clin­ton told CNN Sunday.

“He just seems to be unin­formed or stuck in a Cold War men­tal­ity,” Biden added. “It exposes how lit­tle the gov­er­nor knows about for­eign policy.”

But the administration’s com­ments may have been over­shad­owed Sun­day by Romney’s bal­loon­ing Repub­li­can support.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., spent the week­end at Romney’s side cam­paign­ing across Wis­con­sin, one of three states to host Repub­li­can pri­maries Tues­day. First-term Sen. Ron John­son, R-Wis., fol­lowed Ryan’s lead Sun­day morning.

“I’m com­ing out urg­ing the vot­ers of Wis­con­sin: ‘Let’s lead. Let’s show that this is the time to bring this process to an end so we can focus our atten­tion on retir­ing Pres­i­dent Obama,’” John­son said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

He later appeared at a pan­cake brunch with Rom­ney and offered a mes­sage to “every con­ser­v­a­tive”: “I’ve spo­ken with Mitt, I totally believe he is com­mit­ted to sav­ing America.”

The sen­a­tor joins a grow­ing cho­rus of promi­nent Repub­li­cans call­ing for the party to coa­lesce behind Romney’s can­di­dacy. Rom­ney also scored for­mer Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his father, Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush, in recent days.

Ryan’s endorse­ment was par­tic­u­larly painful for San­to­rum, who had been aggres­sively prais­ing the con­gress­man — a fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tive hero in Wis­con­sin and across the coun­try — for much of the past week. That praise ended Sat­ur­day, when San­to­rum referred to Ryan as “some other Wisconsinite.”

Santorum’s senior staff out­lined an increas­ingly unlikely path to vic­tory that depends upon hypo­thet­i­cal suc­cess more than a month away.

“May is going to be a good month for us,” San­to­rum cam­paign man­ager Mike Biundo said. “The race goes on.”

Biundo con­firmed that San­to­rum is aggres­sively work­ing the phones to sway del­e­gates in states like Wash­ing­ton, Iowa, Min­nesota and Mis­souri that have already voted. But he’s hav­ing mixed success.

“We have some (del­e­gates) that have com­mit­ted. I think most peo­ple seem to right now still be kind of wait­ing it out. There seems to be a lot of that that’s going on,” Biundo said.

San­to­rum was pub­licly defi­ant Sunday.

“Look, this race isn’t even at half­time yet,” he told “Fox News Sun­day.” He said Rom­ney “hasn’t been able to close the deal with con­ser­v­a­tives, much less any­body else in this party. And that’s not going to be an effec­tive tool for us to win this election.”

But with losses pil­ing up for in other indus­trial states like Ohio, Michi­gan and Illi­nois, San­to­rum acknowl­edged the results in Wis­con­sin Tues­day will send a “strong sig­nal” about the direc­tion of the Repub­li­can contest.

And he appears to in retreat.

Hav­ing devoted more than a week to cam­paign­ing across Wis­con­sin, San­to­rum is sched­uled to return to his home state, Penn­syl­va­nia, the day before the Wis­con­sin con­test. Pennsylvania’s pri­mary is more than three weeks away.

San­to­rum noted that he moved out of Louisiana — where he won — before that state’s elec­tion day. But Santorum’s team has demon­strated far less con­fi­dence in recent days about Wis­con­sin than Rom­ney, who has pre­dicted vic­tory here.

Try­ing to be upbeat, San­to­rum dis­missed Romney’s grow­ing sup­port as “panic” in the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment and said see­ing “every­body sort of com­ing out of the wood­work to say the things they’re say­ing today makes me feel like we’re actu­ally doing pretty well here in Wisconsin.”

Mean­while, Rom­ney hopes to score a knock­out blow in Penn­syl­va­nia, which hosts its pri­mary April 24. He already has an office in Har­ris­burg and four paid staffers in the state, and plans to shift addi­tional resources there after Tuesday.

With about half of the GOP nom­i­nat­ing con­tests com­plete, Rom­ney has won 54 per­cent of the del­e­gates at stake, putting him on track to reach the thresh­old 1,144 national con­ven­tion del­e­gates in June. San­to­rum, who has won 27 per­cent of the del­e­gates at stake, would need to win 74 per­cent of the remain­ing del­e­gates to clinch the nomination.

Posted by AP News on Apr 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.