Politics
Election 2012: Obama calls Romney’s ideas ‘extreme’ – AP Interview
Obama holds a decisive advantage over Romney when Americans are asked who better understands their daily woes. Yet nearly two-thirds of people in a new AP-GfK poll say the economy is in poor shape, and 60 percent say the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Obama expressed confidence that even voters whose lives have not improved during his term will stick with him as they assess the two candidates.
“If they saw Gov. Romney offering serious proposals that offered some sort of concrete ways in which middle-class families would be helped, then I could understand them thinking about that choice,” Obama said. “But that’s not what’s happening.”
And therein lies the central case that Obama made in the interview, as he has made for months, and as he will again at his own party’s convention in Charlotte, N.C., in early September.
Obama said he is the candidate whose policies have historically helped the middle class on issues that people care about and that shape the economy — education, manufacturing, science and research, Medicare, debt reduction, tax rates, health care, consumer protection, college aid, energy.
Williams, the Romney spokesman, responded that Obama has piled up national debt and presided over high unemployment. “Too many middle-class families are going to sleep each night worried,” he said. “This may be the best President Obama can do, but it’s not the best America can do.”
The moment that could finally shake up a close race could come in the three debates Obama and Romney hold in October. The president said Romney could run into trouble because of arguments that are not backed up by facts, citing a widely debunked television ad campaign in which Romney accuses Obama of gutting the work requirement in the federal welfare law.
“It will be a little tougher to defend face-to-face,” Obama said.
