Politics
Elections 2012: Obama campaign ready for Romney
Every time Obama talks about millionaires paying a fairer share in taxes to help all of America, as he did again Wednesday, it is meant as a contrast to Romney and his vision. Vice President Joe Biden has been out giving a battery of campaign speeches that take on Romney, including another one on Thursday in New Hampshire.
And long before Santorum bowed out this week, Obama had been trying to define the election as a clear, basic choice. His pitch is that Romney will revert to a harmful trickle-down, let-people-flail philosophy instead of spending tax dollars on core priorities and using the government as an enforcer of fairness for all.
Romney sees Obama as a “throwback to the old-style Democrats of the past, big government, welfare state Democrats” who want America to become Europe.
The race is on. It’s been on.
“I think people think about this as some kind of switch going off, but it really is more like a ramping up,” Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said as Romney’s status as nominee was assured. “There’s no big line of demarcation, because the arguments have been developing over a long period of time.”
At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said Obama will methodically get more into campaign mode. But he said the president is still in a period where he will talk more about the agenda in front of him, both in Congress and on the world stage, than about “his general election opponent.”
Yet life gets blurry when a president runs for a second term. Political fundraisers in battleground states and near the White House have become staples of Obama’s calendar. Even his official events, like a speech he gave on tax fairness at Florida Atlantic University on Tuesday, take on the unmistakable rah-rah feel of a campaign.
Romney, transitioning to his new role as all-but-sure nominee, showed a bit more swagger with Santorum out of the race.
