Hard hits follow Romney promise to elevate debate

Just days ago, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney stood with newly minted running mate Paul Ryan and promised a campaign focused on big ideas like

“a positive governing agenda that will lead to economic growth.”

Since then, the GOP ticket has been anything but positive. The pair has lambasted President Barack Obama on everything from Medicare to welfare to the hard-

hitting tone of the campaign.


Obama is running a campaign of “division and attack and hatred,” Romney told CBS News on Wednesday, amplifying criticisms he made a night earlier before a

cheering crowd in Ohio. Added Romney: The president is “running just to hang onto power, and I think he would do anything in his power.”

Obama’s team, in turn, castigated Romney for the remarks, saying they bore the mark of an “unhinged” campaign.

It was the latest evidence of a shift in strategy for Romney. And it comes as national polls show Obama with a slight lead just three months before the

election and as the GOP ticket increasingly faces questions about which parts of Ryan’s budget plan and Medicare proposals Romney supports.

In recent days, Romney has branched out from his core message of the economy and jobs. He has spent a year working to sully Obama on that front alone, while

casting himself as a credible steward of the economy given his decades in the private sector. But Romney has now taken to criticizing Obama in biting terms

on multiple fronts, an attempt to poke holes in the president in as many places as possible as the clock ticks down on the Republican’s chance to gain

ground over the Democrat.

Romney’s latest effort: going after Obama’s central strength: his likability. The Republican hopes to convince voters that the man who once was the

candidate of hope and change — and is now a president most voters still like, even if they don’t support his policies — doesn’t represent those values

any longer.

Obama, to be sure, is not innocent of the go-for-the-jugular politics.

His team has spent months — and millions — criticizing Romney over his record at the private equity firm Bain Capital and his time as Massachusetts

governor. Obama and his allies have lambasted Romney for his refusal to release more than one year and a summary of another year of his personal tax returns.

And a super political action committee aligned with the president produced an ad suggesting that Romney was at least partly responsible for the death of a

woman whose husband lost a job at a company Bain owned.

Earlier this year, Romney strategists expressed some hesitation about assailing Obama’s character for fear of turning off the swing voters who backed Obama

in 2008 and wanted to see him succeed.

During Obama’s term, voters told pollsters they liked him, even if they rejected his economic policies and were unhappy with his health care law. To hear

Romney aides tell it back then, there were potential pitfalls in criticizing Obama too personally. The solution, then, was a laser-like focus on the economy

and jobs and an insistence that, while Obama might be a decent guy, his economic policies were bad for the country.