Romney Hits Obama on 'Revenge' Vow
Republican nominee Mitt Romney chided President Barack Obama Saturday for calling on Americans to vote for "revenge" as the battle for the White House raced to an ill-tempered climax.
Three days before voters choose between giving Obama a second term or sending him packing back to Chicago, the rivals chased one another through a handful of states that will decide Tuesday's too-close-to-call election.
Romney was up early in New Hampshire, which has only four of the 270 electoral votes needed to claim the White House but could punch above its weight in a tight finish, accusing Obama of "demonizing" political foes.
"I won't represent just one party, I'll represent one nation," Romney told a crowd at an airport rally outside Portsmouth, and warned Obama would find it impossible to work with congressional Republicans if he wins re-election.
Romney also debuted a new political ad Saturday, seizing on Obama's comment in Ohio a day earlier when he told supporters angry at the Republicans not to boo but to vote, saying "voting's the best revenge."
The ad featured Romney telling his biggest crowd of the campaign in Ohio Friday that Obama "asked his supporters to vote for revenge -- for revenge."
"Instead, I ask the American people to vote for love of country," Romney said.
Romney repeated the message Saturday in New Hampshire and then at a rally in Dubuque, Iowa, where in a show of close combat on the last weekend of the campaign, Obama was set to touchdown for his own event at the same airport just five hours later.
"Words are cheap," Romney told a crowd in Dubuque. "You can say whatever you want to say in a campaign, but what you can achieve -- results -- those are earned. Those can't be faked."
Obama campaign aide Jen Psaki defended the president's "revenge" comment as a reaction to Romney "scare tactics" that she said came in the form of a Romney television ad aimed at frightening auto workers into thinking their jobs were being shifted overseas.
Obama's message was that "if you don't like the policies, if you don't like the plan that governor Romney is putting forward, if you think that's a bad deal for the middle class, then you can go to the voting booth and cast your ballot," Psaki told reporters. "It's nothing more complicated than that."
The president earlier visited the Washington headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as New York and New Jersey struggle to deal with the aftermath of murderous superstorm Sandy.
"We still have a long way to go," said Obama, stressing he had no time for government "red tape" which could hold up the relief effort, after discussing the crisis with the governors of New Jersey, Connecticut and New York.
The Obama campaign enjoys the comparison between Obama doing his job managing the government while Romney campaigns as polls show a majority of Americans approve of the president's handling of Sandy.
Meanwhile, his Vice President Joe Biden was stumping for him in Colorado, where he rolled out a snarky new campaign line against Romney.
"This is the end of daylight savings time tonight," Biden said, referring to the seasonal one-hour U.S. time adjustment due overnight.
"It's Mitt Romney's favorite time of the year because he gets to turn the clock back."
With time running down until the election, Obama soon headed back to the campaign trail with a stop in Mentor, in the possible tipping point state of Ohio, where he said Romney's campaign was simply based on "repackaging the same policies that did not work."
"We know what change looks like. What he is offering ain't it," Obama charged.
He later heads to Wisconsin and Iowa, and wraps up his day with a night rally in Virginia, a battleground where he and Romney are locked in a tight race.
Latest polls show Obama and Romney tied nationally, but Obama appears to be solidifying his position in enough of the eight or so swing states that will decide the election to support his hopes of a second term.
New surveys by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News Saturday showed the president up by 47 to 49 percent in Florida and leading Romney by 51 to 45 percent in Ohio, double the margin in the current RealClearPolitics average.
A Mason Dixon poll for the Miami Herald, however, had Romney up by six points in Florida, which the Republican, who also needs Ohio, cannot afford to lose if he is to be elected America's 45th president.
The president's team believe that early voting and polling data, plus the president's grass roots turnout machine, mean that Obama will prevail in a close race.
But Romney's camp believes opinion polls are overstating the proportion of Democrats in the electorate and that their candidate is poised to ride the support of independent voters to victory on Tuesday.
Source: Agence France Presse
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