US election 2012: Barack Obama’s re-election campaign swings into action with Mitt Romney attacks

Giving “the keys to the White House” to Mr Romney or his rivals in
November would “bankrupt the middle class once again,” warned the
vice-president.

Mr Romney’s article was also the focus of a section in the slick 17-minute
campaign film by Oscar-winning director David Guggenheim released yesterday
by Mr Obama, which mentioned none of the president’s other potential
opponents.

Mr Romney’s beleaguered campaign for his party’s candidacy rattles on next
week, with a crucial primary in Illinois on Tuesday.

Republicans now assume he will be their nominee but fear the agonising process
of getting there will leave him politically damaged and badly short of money.

However Mr Obama’s allies say any Republican candidate will enjoy hundreds of
millions of dollars in backing promised by leading Right-wing “Super PAC”
campaign groups, while the Left-leaning Super PAC supporting the president
has struggled to raise cash.

Dozens of Mr Obama’s “bundlers” – top fund-raisers who gather
donations from other backers – were thanked with invitations to Wednesday’s
state dinner at the White House with David Cameron, as the president
attempts to boost his coffers.

He visited Illinois and Georgia yesterday for five campaign events aimed at
collecting millions of dollars.

Meanwhile his allies also attacked Mr Romney for not condemning Rush Limbaugh,
the leading Right-wing DJ, for describing a student campaigning for
subsidised contraception as “a slut”.

Democrats seized on the remark as proof that the Republican party – in which
Limbaugh is an influential figure – are waging a “war on women”,
amid crackdowns on abortion rights in some states.

Mr Romney only said of Limbaugh’s remarks that they were “not the words I
would have used” to describe Sandra Fluke, a 30-year-old law student at
Georgetown University.

Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s former chief of staff and now Chicago mayor, said Mr
Romney had shown he lacked the “fortitude, strength or character”
to be president,” in the most personal criticism so far from the Obama
camp.

Describing Limbaugh’s comment as “absolutely repulsive”, Mr Emanuel
asked in an interview: “If you can’t stand up to Rush, how are you
going to stand up to Russia?”

David Axelrod, Mr Obama’s top campaign adviser, twisted the knife by claiming
that Mr Romney’s response was “disappointing” given that Limbaugh
was the Republican party’s “de facto boss”.

Mr Obama leads Mr Romney in a hypothetical matchup by 4.1 per cent, according
to a RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls. However, aides expect the real
election result would be closer.

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