Romney decries military cuts; Obama talking jobs

DAVID ESPO

KASIE HUNT

Asso­ci­ated Press

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama pledged to cre­ate many more jobs and “make the mid­dle class secure again” in a campaign-closing appeal on Thurs­day — more than five weeks before Elec­tion Day — to vot­ers already cast­ing bal­lots in large numbers.

Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney, focus­ing on threats beyond Amer­i­can shores, accused the com­man­der in chief of back­ing dan­ger­ous cuts in defense spending.

“The idea of cut­ting our mil­i­tary is unthink­able and dev­as­tat­ing. And when I become pres­i­dent we will not,” declared the chal­lenger, strug­gling to reverse a slide in opin­ion polls.

Rom­ney and Obama cam­paigned a few hun­dred miles apart in Vir­ginia, 40 days before their long race ends. They’ll be in much closer quar­ters next Wednes­day in Den­ver — for the first of three pres­i­den­tial debates on the cam­paign cal­en­dar and per­haps the challenger’s best remain­ing chance to change the tra­jec­tory of the campaign.

In a race where the econ­omy is the dom­i­nant issue, there was a fresh sign of national weak­ness as the Com­merce Depart­ment low­ered its ear­lier esti­mate of tepid growth last spring. Rom­ney and his allies seized on the news as evi­dence that Obama’s poli­cies aren’t working.

There was good news for the pres­i­dent in the form of a sur­vey by The Wash­ing­ton Post and Kaiser Fam­ily Foun­da­tion sug­gest­ing he has gained ground among older vot­ers after a month-long ad war over Repub­li­can plans for Medicare.

The pace also was quick­en­ing in the strug­gle for con­trol of the U.S. Senate.

Promi­nent Repub­li­can con­ser­v­a­tives pledged finan­cial and polit­i­cal sup­port for Rep. Todd Akin in Mis­souri. That com­pli­cated Demo­c­ra­tic Sen. Claire McCaskill’s bid for re-election. But it also left Rom­ney, run­ning mate Paul Ryan and the rest of the GOP hier­ar­chy in an awk­ward posi­tion after they tried unsuc­cess­fully to push Akin off the bal­lot in the wake of his con­tro­ver­sial com­ments about rape.

Far­ther west, in Ari­zona, Repub­li­can Rep. Jeff Flake unleashed an ad call­ing Demo­c­ra­tic rival Richard Car­mona “Barack Obama’s rub­ber­stamp.” It was not meant as a com­pli­ment in a state seem­ingly headed Romney’s way, a response for sure to Demo­c­ra­tic claims that the Sen­ate con­test was unex­pect­edly close.

In the pres­i­den­tial race, early vot­ing has already begun in Vir­ginia as well as South Dakota, Idaho and Ver­mont. It began dur­ing the day in Wyoming as well as in Iowa, like Vir­ginia one of the most highly con­tested states. Early vot­ers had formed a line a half block long in Des Moines before the elec­tions office opened at 8 a.m.

Cam­paign­ing in Vir­ginia Beach, Obama said, “It’s time for a new eco­nomic patri­o­tism, an eco­nomic patri­o­tism rooted in the belief that grow­ing our econ­omy begins with a strong and thriv­ing mid­dle class.” It was a line straight from the two-minute tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial his cam­paign released overnight.

He said that if re-elected he would back poli­cies to cre­ate a mil­lion new man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs, help busi­nesses dou­ble exports and give tax breaks to com­pa­nies that “invest in Amer­ica, not ship jobs over­seas.” He pledged to cut oil imports in half while dou­bling the fuel effi­ciency of cars and trucks, make sure there are 100,000 new teach­ers trained in math and sci­ence, cut the growth of col­lege tuition in half and expand stu­dent aid “so more Amer­i­cans can afford it.”

He also touted a “bal­anced plan to reduce the deficit by $4 tril­lion,” but he included $1 tril­lion in reduc­tions that already have taken place, and he took credit for sav­ing half of the funds bud­geted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that no longer are needed.

Obama also said he would “ask the wealthy to pay a lit­tle more,” a ref­er­ence to the tax increase he favors on incomes over $200,000 for indi­vid­u­als and $250,000 for cou­ples. It is per­haps his most fun­da­men­tal dis­agree­ment on pol­icy with Rom­ney, who wants to extend expir­ing tax cuts at all lev­els, includ­ing the highest.

Obama’s cam­paign put out a sec­ond, scathing com­mer­cial dur­ing the day based on Romney’s recorded com­ments from last May that 47 per­cent of Amer­i­cans don’t pay income taxes and feel they are vic­tims enti­tled to gov­ern­ment ben­e­fits. Rom­ney added that as a can­di­date his job is not to worry about them.

In the ad, Romney’s by-now well-known com­ments are heard as images scroll by of a white woman with two chil­dren in a rural set­ting, a black woman wear­ing work­place safety gog­gles, two older white men wear­ing Vet­er­ans of For­eign Wars hats; a Latino, and finally a white woman with safety gog­gles — each of them meant to por­tray mil­lions whom Rom­ney described dis­mis­sively in the appear­ance before donors four months ago.

Rom­ney coun­tered with a new ad of his own, point­ing to com­ments Obama made four years ago when he said he would sup­port pro­pos­als to raise the cost of busi­ness for facil­i­ties than run on coal. “So if some­body wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bank­rupt them,” the then-presidential can­di­date is seen saying.

The nar­ra­tor adds, “Obama wages war on coal while we lose jobs to China, which is using more coal every day. Now your job is in danger.”

Rom­ney cam­paigned at an Amer­i­can Legion hall in Spring­field, Va., a sub­urb of Wash­ing­ton, D.C., accus­ing Obama of sup­port­ing cuts in the defense bud­get that would be detri­men­tal to the nation’s mil­i­tary readiness.

“The world is not a safe place. It remains dan­ger­ous,” he said, refer­ring to North Korea, Syria, Iran, Pak­istan and Afghanistan. “The idea of cut­ting our mil­i­tary com­mit­ment by a tril­lion dol­lars over this decade is unthink­able and devastating.”

Appeal­ing for sup­port from his audi­ence, he said, “You real­ize we have fewer ships in the Navy than any time since 1917. … Our Air Force is older and smaller than any time since 1947, when it was formed. This is unac­cept­able. And the idea of shrink­ing our active duty per­son­nel by 100,000 or 200,000 — I want to add 100,000 to active duty personnel.”

To have a strong mil­i­tary, he said, it’s imper­a­tive to have a strong econ­omy, yet he added that growth in China and Rus­sia is stronger than in the United States. He pre­dicted that under Obama, there would be no improvement.

“So two — two very dif­fer­ent paths. One is the path the president’s pro­posed, which is the sta­tus quo. His is the path of — well, he calls it ‘for­ward.’ I call it ‘fore­warned.’ All right? All right?

The $1 tril­lion Rom­ney men­tioned in defense cuts had the sup­port of Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats alike in Con­gress, although he says GOP law­mak­ers made a mis­take in vot­ing for the reduc­tions and sev­eral now want to pre­vent them from tak­ing effect.

Posted by AP News on Sep 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.