Romney attacks Obama on economy in Indiana

EVANSVILLE, Indiana (AP) — Republican challenger Mitt Romney hammered away at President Barack Obama's economic policies Saturday, saying the latest jobs report is evidence they aren't working.

Obama celebrated his 51st birthday and offered no public comment. On Friday he noted the same jobs report showed that the economy added 163,000 jobs in July, the best pace of hiring in five months.

Romney, who hopes to defeat Obama in the November general election, met briefly with Indiana voters before heading to a series of private fundraisers. He pointed to Friday's Labor Department report that found the jobless rate ticked up to 8.3 percent from 8.2 in June.

"These are real families having real hard times," Romney told dozens of supporters gathered in Stepto's BBQ Shack in Evansville. "This has been an extraordinary series of policy failures on behalf of the president."

Obama narrowly won Indiana four years ago, becoming the first Democrat to carry the state in more than 40 years. But recent polls suggest that Romney has the edge with Election Day three months away. The president is not chosen by a nationwide popular vote but in state-by-state contests. That makes battleground states like Indiana — which are neither reliably Republican nor Democratic — especially important in tight elections, as the November vote is expected to be.

The Obama campaign released a new television ad Saturday that targets Romney's opposition to abortion rights and funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions. Women in the ad describe Romney as extreme and out of touch. One woman suggests that the Republican wants to return to the laws of the 1950s.

The new ad will air in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, and Nevada. The Romney campaign, meanwhile, dismissed the ad as a distraction from the previous day's jobs numbers.

"One day after the unemployment rate increased and we reached 42 consecutive months with a jobless rate greater than 8 percent, it is not surprising that the Obama campaign would release a false ad in an attempt to distract from the effects of the President's failed policies," said Romney spokesman Andrea Saul.

At the same time, each side went after the other in a dispute over military voting rights in Ohio. Romney accused the Obama administration of trying to limit early voting privileges of servicemen, while the Obama campaign accused his Republican rival of intentionally distorting the facts.

Obama's campaign and Democrats filed the lawsuit last month against Ohio's top elections official in a dispute over the battleground state's law that restricts early, in-person voting during the final three days before Election Day.

Romney did not address the issue in Indiana, but released a statement calling the lawsuit "an outrage."

Obama's campaign said the lawsuit is intended "to make sure every Ohioan, including military members and their families, has early voting rights over the last weekend prior to the election."