Romney pushes attacks against Obama into Bowling Green

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney ges­tures dur­ing a cam­paign stop on Wednes­day in Bowl­ing Green. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Evan Vucci)

STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

BOWLING GREEN — Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney accused Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on Wednes­day of car­ing more about his own job secu­rity than about cre­at­ing jobs for mil­lions of unem­ployed Amer­i­cans. While press­ing his case against the Demo­c­rat, Rom­ney showed no sign of cav­ing into mount­ing pres­sure for him to release more of his tax returns.

Cam­paign­ing in Ohio, a state key to the polit­i­cal fates of both con­tenders, Rom­ney said the pres­i­dent in the past six months has held more than 100 fundrais­ers for his re-election cam­paign and no meet­ings with his jobs council.

Rom­ney is try­ing to por­tray Obama as out of touch with the eco­nomic pain afflict­ing mil­lions of peo­ple, includ­ing those who go to work every day, while hop­ing to shift the focus from his per­sonal finances and busi­ness record.

“His pri­or­ity is try­ing to keep his own job, and that’s why he’s going to lose it,” Rom­ney declared, build­ing off fiery speeches in Penn­syl­va­nia the day before in which he accused Obama of believ­ing gov­ern­ment is more vital to a thriv­ing econ­omy than the nation’s work­ers and dreamers.

Hav­ing spent most of Tues­day court­ing donors across Texas, Obama spent Wednes­day at the White House. His wife, first lady Michelle Obama, was speak­ing at a cam­paign fundraiser in Birm­ing­ham, Ala. Obama was head­ing out Thurs­day on a two-day cam­paign swing through Florida.

Democ­rats have pressed for the release of more of Romney’s tax returns and have hounded him about dis­crep­an­cies over when he left his pri­vate equity firm, Bain Capital.

In his appear­ances, Obama has sought keep Rom­ney focused on mat­ters other than the slug­gish econ­omy, even releas­ing a single-shot TV ad Tues­day that sug­gests Rom­ney gamed the sys­tem so well that he may not have paid any taxes at all for years.

“If you’re going to run for pres­i­dent, it’s not nec­es­sar­ily com­fort­able but it has become a tra­di­tion and it’s an impor­tant one, you make your tax returns avail­able because you think the Amer­i­can peo­ple deserve that kind of trans­parency,” Obama spokesman Jay Car­ney told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, took a rare step into the pres­i­den­tial race Wednes­day, say­ing Obama’s crit­i­cism of Romney’s career and taxes are meant to dis­tract from the administration’s han­dling of the economy.

Boehner said Obama’s ques­tions are an “attack on the pri­vate sec­tor” and show he “doesn’t give a damn about middle-class Amer­i­cans who are out there look­ing for work.”

Boehner also warned those, includ­ing fel­low Repub­li­cans who increas­ingly are call­ing on Rom­ney to make more of his past tax returns public.

“The Amer­i­can peo­ple are ask­ing, ‘Where are the jobs?’ Boehner said. “They’re not ask­ing where the hell the tax returns are. It’s not about tax returns, it’s about the economy.”

Car­ney said there was no spe­cific rea­son why the pres­i­dent and the jobs coun­cil haven’t met for six months.

“The pres­i­dent has obvi­ously got a lot on his plate,” Car­ney said. “But he con­tin­ues to solicit and receive advice from numer­ous folks out­side the admin­is­tra­tion about the econ­omy, about ideas that he can act on with Con­gress or admin­is­tra­tively to help the econ­omy grow and help it cre­ate jobs.”

Obama’s cam­paign, in a web video released Wednes­day, ques­tioned Romney’s claim that he had “no respon­si­bil­ity what­so­ever” at Bain Cap­i­tal after Feb­ru­ary 1999, when Rom­ney says he left the firm. SEC fil­ings list him as sole owner and CEO through Feb­ru­ary 2001.

After being on his heels for sev­eral days, Rom­ney launched an aggres­sive coun­ter­at­tack this week, punc­tu­ated by bit­ing speeches, con­fer­ence calls and a TV ad Wednes­day accus­ing Obama of “crony cap­i­tal­ism.” The ad says Obama sent stim­u­lus money to “friends, donors, cam­paign sup­port­ers and spe­cial inter­est groups” and charges that tax­payer dol­lars went to projects in Fin­land and China.

Rom­ney also has seized on com­ments Obama made last week in Virginia.

Mak­ing a point about the sup­port­ive role gov­ern­ment plays in build­ing the nation, the pres­i­dent said, in part: “Some­body helped to cre­ate this unbe­liev­able Amer­i­can sys­tem that we have that allowed you to thrive. Some­body invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a busi­ness, you didn’t build that. Some­body else made that happen.”

Obama later added: “The point is, is that when we suc­ceed, we suc­ceed because of our indi­vid­ual ini­tia­tive, but also because we do things together.”

Rom­ney lashed out at the remark while in in Bowl­ing Green, in keep­ing with a strat­egy his cam­paign says will be a theme for the week, if not longer.

“This is the height of fool­ish­ness,” he said. “It shows how out of touch he is with the char­ac­ter of America.”

The attacks marked a sub­stan­tial esca­la­tion for the often-reserved Rom­ney, who has strug­gled to answer ques­tions about his busi­ness career and per­sonal tax returns. The for­mer busi­ness­man, who would be among the nation’s wealth­i­est pres­i­dents if elected, so far has released just one year of per­sonal income tax returns and promised to release a second.

That’s a stark devi­a­tion from a tra­di­tion cre­ated in part by Romney’s father, George, a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date a gen­er­a­tion ago who released 12 years of his returns.

A defi­ant Rom­ney has accused the Obama cam­paign of using the issue to dis­tract vot­ers from the econ­omy. But it’s unclear whether Romney’s new strat­egy will be enough to change the sub­ject. Sev­eral promi­nent Repub­li­cans have joined Democ­rats in push­ing Rom­ney for more transparency.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry — who chal­lenged Rom­ney for the GOP nom­i­na­tion — became the lat­est top con­ser­v­a­tive to pres­sure Rom­ney to open his finances. Perry, who has released his tax returns dat­ing back to 1992, said any­one run­ning for office should make pub­lic as much per­sonal infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble to help vot­ers decide.

The con­ser­v­a­tive National Review also urged Rom­ney to release more tax returns even though it agreed with him that Obama’s camp wanted them for a “fish­ing expedition.”

For­mer Min­nesota Gov. Tim Paw­lenty, who fea­tures promi­nently in spec­u­la­tion about Romney’s choice for a run­ning mate, vig­or­ously defended Romney’s lim­ited tax release.

“There is no claim or no cred­i­ble indi­ca­tion that he’s done any­thing wrong,” Paw­lenty said Wednes­day on “CBS This Morning.”

Paw­lenty accused Obama’s cam­paign of “hang­ing shiny objects before the pub­lic and the press, and the press is tak­ing the bait.”

Posted by AP News on Jul 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.