Romney pounces on Obama's economic policies

The presidential campaign ignited Friday after a super PAC linked to Republican strategist Karl Rove launched the season's first major brushback pitch - a 30-second ad mocking President Obama as "a celebrity president," a preview of one of the GOP's top attack lines.


Analysts said comparing the pop-culture-conversant Obama and the more publicly stiff Mitt Romney, the presumed GOP nominee, may not produce the result Rove intended. But the Obama campaign's response inspired a new question: How should it handle the killing of Osama bin Laden?

The first major ad salvo of the campaign began Thursday with a new 30-second online ad produced by Rove's American Crossroads group, which is not affiliated with Romney's campaign. It shows a montage of Obama's top pop-culture turns, singing part of an Al Green song at a fundraiser and hamming it up this week on Jimmy Fallon's NBC late night show.


After waxing further about Ohio's positive jobs picture, Kasich added, "That's why I'm for Mitt Romney for president, because while we're doing much better in Ohio now, the problem is we still have obstacles in our way, and this is a man who has a proven record of creating jobs."


Romney's history as a corporate takeover executive proved to be a mixed blessing in the primaries as opponents highlighted the thousands of layoffs spurred by deals that yielded millions of dollars for him and his investment partners. Democrats are poised to repeat the criticisms in the fall.


On Friday, Romney highlighted the jobs gained by the deals he made as chief executive of Bain Capital, describing himself as a "turn-around" specialist. He took credit for an investment in Staples that he said ultimately produced 90,000 jobs at the office-supply chain. His plan for a sharply scaled-back government, he said, would improve the climate for "job creators."

Responding to the Obama campaign's accusations that he would fund tax cuts for millionaires by denying education and healthcare to the middle class, Romney said he would unite Americans rather than divide them.


"I'll not point at one or another of [the] American people and say, 'Well, these Wall Street people are bad,'" he said. "All the roads in America are connected. You can't attack parts of America and assume America will rise and become strong. I won't attack this executive, or that successful person."


Romney's immediate goal Friday was to counter Obama's assault on him and other Republicans this week over the cost of student loans. The event at Otterbein followed Obama's visits this week to colleges in three other battleground states — Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina.


Romney sidestepped the student-loan issue that Obama had used as the centerpiece of his campus events: the scheduled July 1 doubling of the 3.4% interest rate on federal Stafford loans to undergraduates. In a move to rebuild support among young voters, a pillar of his 2008 campaign, Obama has called on Republicans to join him in canceling the rate hike.


Romney recently agreed to support a measure to stop the increase, which caused him new grief with conservatives. A Wall Street Journal editorial on Friday called Romney's move a "pander to the youth vote."

"This must be the 'Etch-a-Sketch' version of Mitt that his campaign promised," the editorial said, alluding to Romney's expected pivot to the center after months of appeals to conservatives.


In his speech at Otterbein, Romney said it was time "to get serious about not passing on massive debts to you guys — to your generation.