Obama campaign hits Romney's Massachusetts record in new TV ad
Washington (CNN) - President Barack Obama's re-election team is taking their attack on Republican challenger Mitt Romney's Massachusetts record into the ad wars.
The Obama campaign announced Monday that they're going up with a new television commercial titled "Heard it Before" with what they call "a significant buy" in nine battleground or swing states. On a conference call with reporters Monday, senior Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod estimated roughly $10 million will be spent on the spots.
- Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker
The ad includes a clip from 2002 of then-gubernatorial candidate Romney saying, "I speak the language of business. I know how jobs are created."
The narrator in the ad then says that as governor, Romney had "one of the worst economic records in the country."
"When Mitt Romney was governor, Massachusetts lost 40,000 manufacturing jobs, a rate twice the national average, and fell to 47 in job creation, fourth from the bottom," the narrator says. "Instead of hiring workers in his own state, Romney outsourced call center jobs in India. He cut taxes for millionaires like himself while raising them on the middle class and left the state $2.6 billion deeper in debt."
The commercial continues with the narrator saying "so know when Mitt Romney talks about what he'd do as president," followed by a clip of Romney from this year saying "I know what it takes to create jobs," and concludes with the narrator warning, "Remember, we've heard it all before"
The 60-second spot follows a week of dissecting Romney's four years as Massachusetts governor by top Obama campaign surrogates and Bay State elected officials, as well as through web videos.
The spot will run in are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, according to the Obama campaign.
The Romney campaign responded to the ad, saying Obama's policies have "failed to get Americans back to work."
"Having abandoned 'Hope and Change,' the Obama campaign only 'Hopes To Change The Subject' from an abysmal jobs report," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement. "We're happy to compare the 4.7% unemployment rate Mitt Romney achieved in Massachusetts to President Obama's weak record any day."
Also see:
Poll: Romney's favorable rating jumps, but Obama still more popular
About time the Democrats started fighting back. What we are seeing in ads in MD are pure lies about the flip flopper and what the President has not done or done.
Mitt is for China, India. Bain Capit destroyed for greed. Now wants to destroy your SOCIAL SECURITY, and MEDICARE. Total Nonsense. Yes, on Obama12.
Not only did MA lose 40,000 private sector jobs, they also lost 200,000 people who moved out of state.
Andrea Saul sounds as full of baloney as her employer. Romney certainly did not create more jobs in MA than Obama has. She also seems to be forgetting that 2 years into his term he pulled a Sarah Palin and lost interest in Governing. He spent 200 days outside the state, his approval numbers dropped to 34% by the time he left office (Boston Globe) and he was given a massive rebuke by the people of MA by their giving Democrat Deval Patrick a huge margin of victory Romney left office.
I think part of the problem that Romney and his campaign has is that Romney refuses to acknowledge the recover that has come this far. I doubt that he would saying bad or things about McCain if he were president and the unemployment rate was above 9 or 10% which it would likely have been.