Romney, Obama battle over economy

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (AP) — Challenger Mitt Romney savaged President Barack Obama's handling of the economy, while Obama warned that Republicans would only make matters worse.

It has only been two weeks since Romney shed his competition for the Republican presidential nomination to face Obama in November, and he is still trying to unite his party after an unusually long primary struggle in which he had trouble appealing to hardcore conservatives.

But elements of a Romney vs. Obama race were falling into place Wednesday.

Polls consistently show the economy is the top issue for voters.

Each candidate has material to work with in making his economic case: Nationally, the unemployment rate has dropped from 9.1 percent last August to 8.2 percent in March, the lowest since about the time Obama took office. But job growth has been weak, millions of people remain unemployed and improvements in hiring haven't translated into higher salaries for those who are working.

"Obama is over his head and swimming in the wrong direction," Romney said in a scorching speech delivered across the street from where the president will deliver his Democratic National Convention acceptance speech in September.

"Even if you like Barack Obama, we can't afford Barack Obama," the former Massachusetts governor declared, an evident reference to the president's ability to transcend at least some of the public's dissatisfaction with the pace of the economic recovery.

At the same time, Obama sketched his case for re-election in Ohio, a key battleground state that can vote either Democrat or Republican.

Between 2000 and 2008, Republican policies produced "the slowest job growth in half a century ... and we've spent the last three and a half years cleaning up after that mess," Obama said.

He later went on to Michigan, another key industrial state, for some fundraising. Speaking in a museum named for the founder of Ford Motor Co., he got some of his biggest cheers when he highlighted his administration's efforts to rescue the American auto industry.

Obama's campaign was airing Spanish-language radio ads in Orlando, Florida, Las Vegas and Denver — all in states that the president won four years ago and could be fiercely contested in November.

"Right now, we have two competing visions of our future. And the choice could not be clearer," Obama said.

Without mentioning Romney by name, he said, "Instead of moderating their views even slightly, you now have Republicans in Washington, the ones running for president, proposing budgets that shower the wealthiest Americans with even more tax cuts, folks like me who don't need them, weren't looking for them."

Romney argued that Obama has done "virtually nothing" to help people get jobs.

Reading from Obama's campaign pledges from the 2008 Democratic convention, Romney said the president has "failed by the measurements he set. You won't hear that at this convention, but you're going to hear it at ours."