Romney criticizes Biden on consulate attack

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney ges­tures dur­ing a rally in Rich­mond, Va., Fri­day. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

DAVID ESPO, KASIE HUNT

Asso­ci­ated Press

RICHMOND, Va. — Broad­en­ing his attack on admin­is­tra­tion for­eign pol­icy, Mitt Rom­ney accused Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden on Fri­day of “dou­bling down on denial” in a dis­pute over secu­rity at a diplo­matic post in Libya that was over­run by ter­ror­ists who killed the U.S. ambas­sador and three other Americans.

“The vice pres­i­dent directly con­tra­dicted the sworn tes­ti­mony of State Depart­ment offi­cials,” the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date said, eager to stoke a con­tro­versy that has flared peri­od­i­cally since the attack on Sept. 11 “… Amer­i­can cit­i­zens have a right to know just what’s going on. And we’re going to find out.”

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama had no cam­paign appear­ances dur­ing the day, leav­ing it to White House press sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney to defend Biden’s asser­tion in a cam­paign debate Thurs­day night that “we weren’t told” of an offi­cial request for more secu­rity at the site.

The spokesman rejected Romney’s claim of a con­tra­dic­tion. Biden “was speak­ing directly for him­self and for the pres­i­dent. He meant the White House,” Car­ney said.

With his accu­sa­tion, Rom­ney once again pushed for­eign pol­icy to the fore­front of a cam­paign dom­i­nated for more than a year by the econ­omy, which has been painfully slow to recover from the worst reces­sion in more than a half century.

The Repub­li­can chal­lenger was cam­paign­ing across a pair of bat­tle­ground states dur­ing the day, first in Vir­ginia, which has 13 elec­toral votes, and then in Ohio, which has 18 elec­toral votes and where run­ning mate Paul Ryan joined him. It takes 270 elec­toral votes to win the White House.

Biden was in Wis­con­sin, Ryan’s home state, and one where polls give Obama a nar­row lead despite a debate per­for­mance last week that was so poor it fueled a Repub­li­can come­back nation­ally and sent shud­ders through the ranks of Demo­c­ra­tic partisans.

More than a week later, offi­cials in both par­ties describe a race that has largely returned to the com­pet­i­tive sit­u­a­tion in effect last sum­mer, before the national polit­i­cal con­ven­tions and the emer­gence of a video­tape in which Rom­ney spoke dis­mis­sively of nearly half the coun­try pro­pelled the pres­i­dent to sig­nif­i­cant gains in the polls.

Now, many of the same sur­veys show a very tight race nation­ally and in most of the com­pet­i­tive states, although the pres­i­dent holds a small lead in pub­lic and pri­vate sur­veys in Ohio and Wisconsin.

Still strug­gling to blunt or reverse Romney’s rise in the polls, Obama’s cam­paign launched two new ads in sev­eral of the con­tested states. One shows the Repub­li­can being asked in a “60 Min­utes” inter­view if it’s fair that he paid fed­eral tax of about 14 per­cent last year on income of $20 mil­lion, while a $50,000 wage-earner paid a higher rate. “I think it’s the right way to encour­age eco­nomic growth,” he says, and the nar­ra­tor adds: “Lower tax rates for him than us. Is that the way to grow America?”

The sec­ond com­mer­cial appears aimed at recent com­ments Rom­ney made sug­gest­ing he might not make oppo­si­tion to abor­tion a pri­or­ity. “Maybe you’re won­der­ing what to believe about Mitt Rom­ney,” it says, then shows him pledg­ing to elim­i­nate fed­eral fund­ing for Planned Parenthood.

With con­trol of the Sen­ate and all 435 House seats at stake along with the White House, out­side groups that spent months stock­pil­ing money were now in a race to spend it.

Amer­i­can Cross­roads, a group backed by for­mer White House strate­gist Karl Rove, announced this week it was spend­ing $7.4 mil­lion in the pres­i­den­tial race, while an allied orga­ni­za­tion, Cross­roads GPS, put down $4 mil­lion to help Repub­li­cans in five Sen­ate races and another $8.1 mil­lion for 11 House cam­paigns — a total of nearly $20 million.

Some can­di­dates seemed to be show­ing signs of cam­paign fatigue.

In a Cal­i­for­nia House race between two Democ­rats, Rep. Brad Sher­man seized the shoul­der of Rep. Howard Berman dur­ing a debate, yanked him toward his chest and shouted, “You want to get into this?” The two men stood nose to nose before a sheriff’s deputy moved between them.

“I should not have done that,” con­ceded Sher­man, 57, on Friday.

Said his 71-year-old rival: “It was like in the eighth grade, ‘You want to go over to the park on the cor­ner and fight this out?’”

The two Democ­rats are pit­ted against each other because Cal­i­for­nia advances the top two vote-getters in a pri­mary to the gen­eral elec­tion, regard­less of their party.

In the pres­i­den­tial race, Rom­ney began the cam­paign week with a speech that crit­i­cized the Obama admin­is­tra­tion for show­ing a lack of lead­er­ship around the globe, par­tic­u­larly in the Mid­dle East.

And he chose to end it with a direct chal­lenge to Biden’s can­dor about the attack on the con­sulate in Beng­hazi, Libya.

“When the vice pres­i­dent of the United States directly con­tra­dicts the tes­ti­mony, sworn tes­ti­mony of State Depart­ment offi­cials, Amer­i­can cit­i­zens have a right to know just what’s going on,” he said, refer­ring to a hear­ing ear­lier in the week in a Republican-controlled House committee.

One offi­cial tes­ti­fied before the panel that he had been crit­i­cized for seek­ing addi­tional secu­rity at the facil­ity. A sec­ond said she per­son­ally had turned down requests for more pro­tec­tion at the facil­ity in Benghazi.

Car­ney said, that despite Romney’s alle­ga­tion, there was no con­tra­dic­tion between what Biden said and what the con­gres­sional com­mit­tee had been told.

“Requests for indi­vid­ual per­son­nel at the thou­sands of facil­i­ties … are not adju­di­cated at the White House,” the spokesman said. “They are decided at the State Department.”

Biden, cam­paign­ing in LaCrosse, Wis., did not men­tion Libya on the day after the debate. Instead, he mocked Ryan for hav­ing said on Thurs­day night that a House bud­get pro­posal that he authored would not lead to dras­tic spend­ing cuts in Medicare, edu­ca­tion and other areas.

“Con­gress­man Ryan say­ing his bud­get does not have spend­ing cuts is like Gov. Rom­ney stand­ing in an unem­ploy­ment line and say­ing, ‘I didn’t out­source you job, I off­shored it,” he said, refer­ring to a dis­tinc­tion Repub­li­cans sought to draw ear­lier in the campaign.

The con­tro­versy over Libya flared as both Rom­ney and Obama looked ahead to their sec­ond debate, set for next Tues­day in Hemp­stead, N.Y.

After being accused by some Democ­rats of fail­ing to pre­pare ade­quately for last week’s encounter, Obama arranged for sev­eral days of rehearsals in Williams­burg, Va.

Rom­ney was fly­ing home to Mass­a­chu­setts on Sat­ur­day so he, too, could get ready for an event likely to be watched by a tele­vi­sion audi­ence mea­sured in the tens of millions.

The two men will hold their third and final debate on Oct. 22 in Boca Raton, Fla.

Posted by AP News on Oct 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.