Obama Campaign Continues Attacks on Romney

President Obama barnstormed through this swing state on Saturday as his campaign relentlessly hammered at Mitt Romney’s business record, releasing a mocking new ad that shows Mr. Romney singing “America the Beautiful” as it accuses his former firm of shipping American jobs overseas. Mr. Obama, speaking first to a drenched crowd during a downpour in the Richmond suburb of Glen Allen, and then at Centreville High School in Fairfax County, accused Mr. Romney of investing in “companies that have been called pioneers in outsourcing.” He ignored Mr. Romney’s demands for an apology about the campaign’s tone, which the Republican candidate had called for in interviews on Friday. “My opponent and his allies in Congress, they believe in top-down economics,” Mr. Obama said. “If you cut through all the stuff, what they are really saying is tax cuts for the wealthy, roll back regulations. That is essentially their plan.” The president’s campaign has spent more than a week harping on Mr. Romney’s personal wealth and calling on him to disclose information about his personal finances by releasing more years of his tax returns. It has also raised questions about Mr. Romney’s offshore investments and accounts. The new ad reminds viewers of those issues as it shows a clip of Mr. Romney singing at a campaign event in Florida this year. It says Mr. Romney shipped jobs to Mexico, China and India — accusations that Mr. Romney’s campaign vehemently denies. And it says Mr. Romney had “millions” in a Swiss bank account and “tax havens” in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. “Mitt Romney’s not the solution,” the ad states. “He’s the problem.” On Saturday, the Republican campaign repeated Mr. Romney’s angry comments about what it said are untrue allegations surrounding Mr. Romney’s personal finances. “As the failures of his presidency become more evident, Barack Obama has resorted to the tactics of a typical politician: dishonest and totally unsubstantiated attacks meant to distract from his own record by smearing the reputation of his opponent,” said Amanda Hennenberg, a Romney campaign spokeswoman. Mr. Romney’s campaign has repeatedly defended the offshore accounts, saying that he paid all the taxes legally required. On Friday, Mr. Romney again refused to release multiple years of his tax returns. He has released a return for 2010, and an estimate for 2011. He characterized the Obama campaign’s allegations as “reckless” and “absurd.” But if Mr. Romney’s campaign hoped that his rival’s campaign would back off its aggressive tone, they were disappointed. Traveling with the president on Air Force One, Mr. Obama’s top aides went out of their way Saturday morning to highlight their continued attacks. In addition to the television ad, Mr. Obama’s campaign released a Web video compilation of attacks that Mr. Romney has made in the past. The point, aides said, is that Mr. Romney is equally responsible for the campaign’s tone. “Mitt Romney, I just want to remind you, is the same candidate who questioned whether the president understood America, questioned whether he understood freedom,” said Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the Obama campaign. “He spends a lot of time attacking.” The video, titled “Asking for Apologies While Launching Attacks,” shows Mr. Romney raising the issue of Mr. Obama’s ties to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and shows him accusing the president of “appeasement” in his foreign policy. “This president spends a lot of time apologizing for America,” the video shows Mr. Romney saying. “He should be apologizing to America.” The video concludes by saying: “Mitt Romney. He sure asks for a lot of apologies. When he’s not busy launching attacks.” . Throughout most of his speech on Saturday, his second day in Virginia, Mr. Obama avoided the down-and-dirty political combat that has consumed much of the campaign coverage. “Even though the crisis put us through some very tough times, the American people are tougher,” Mr. Obama said. “Folks may have gotten knocked down some, but they got back up.” But the second half of Mr. Obama’s stump speech is tougher. He accused Republicans of giving tax breaks to companies that send work overseas. And he quoted Mr. Romney as “saying let Detroit go bankrupt,” the headline on an article he wrote in The New York Times arguing for a managed bankruptcy for the auto industry. He concluded with a fiery defense of his health care bill. “The Supreme Court has spoken. It is the law of the land. We are going to implement it,” he said. “It was the right thing to do. We’re not going backwards, we are going forward.”