Romney criticizes Obama on jobs, defense cuts

SEMINOLE, Florida (AP) — Republican challenger Mitt Romney faulted President Barack Obama for the country's weak jobs outlook and looming defense cuts Saturday as he tried to blunt any momentum the incumbent picked up from the festive, well-choreographed Democratic National Convention.

Obama and Romney clawed for advantage in a post-convention push through some of the most closely contested states, Obama on a Florida bus tour, Romney rallying in Virginia, opening the homestretch to the Nov. 6 election.

Each contender was seeking to frame the campaign on their own terms. Romney was concentrating on the economy, while Obama sought to play to his strengths by portraying himself as a champion of the middle class.

Eager to change the subject after a dismal jobs report, Obama tried to rekindle some of the enthusiasm of his 2008 campaign with a bus tour through the pivotal state of Florida, urging supporters not to "buy into the cynicism that somehow the change we fought for isn't possible."

Obama, speaking to a crowd of 11,000 at the Seminole campus of St. Petersburg College, gave Floridians a populist plea not to "turn away now."

"If you give up the idea that your voice can make a difference," Obama said, "then other folks are going to fill the void: the lobbyists, the special interests, the people who are writing $10 million checks, the folks who are trying to keep people from voting" and more.

Campaigning in a state where the 8.8 percent jobless rate tops the national average, the president made no mention of Friday's government report showing a weak employment outlook for the nation. But he urged people to help him "finish what we started," and he put creating more jobs at the top of his to-do list.

Romney, a multimillionaire businessman and former Massachusetts governor, is casting Obama as an inept steward of the nation's post-recession recovery, saying the president's policies have inhibited job growth. Obama is countering by repeatedly decrying Romney's economic remedies — such as tax cuts and deregulation — as failed throwbacks to President George W. Bush's administration that would further endanger the economy.

Romney, appearing before a flag-waving audience of 4,000 in a hanger at the private Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach, was determined to keep the spotlight on the country's weak jobs outlook.

On Friday, the Labor Department reported that employers added just 96,000 jobs in August and that, aided by frustrated job hunters giving up, the jobless rate dropped from 8.3 percent to 8.1 percent. No president has won re-election with unemployment over 8 percent since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"This is not the kind of news that the American people are hoping for and deserve," he said. Then he projected forward to a Romney presidency to add: "I'm here to tell you that things are about to get a lot better."

Speaking in the Navy town of Virginia Beach, where many jobs are tied to defense, Romney criticized the president both for past cuts to military spending and "unthinkable" potential reductions threatened under the so-called "sequestration." That's a series of automatic, across-the-board cuts that will take effect if Congress doesn't reach a budget solution in the next few months. Half of the cuts are set to come from the Pentagon under a deal negotiated between Obama and Republican leaders in Congress.

"I think it was a mistake for Republicans to go along with it," Romney said in an interview taped for Sunday's broadcast of "Meet the Press" on NBC. On the stage, he only blamed the president for the defense cuts.

Obama has opposed the depth of the cuts but has said congressional Republicans need to adopt a plan that includes increases in revenue.

Romney called the potential cuts "unthinkable to Virginia, to our employment needs. But it's also unthinkable to the ability and the commitment of America to maintain our liberty. ... If I'm president, we'll get rid of the sequestration cuts and rebuild America's military might."

From Virginia Beach, Romney headed for NASCAR territory, prime ground for working-class white voters. He planned to attend the Federated Auto Parts 400 at Richmond International Raceway.

Romney and Obama are deadlocked in Virginia, where the Democrat is strong in the northern suburbs of Washington, D.C., and the Republican does better in the south and rural areas.

In Florida, where the race also is extremely tight, the president's two-day, 260-mile (420-kilometer) trip in a fortified, million-dollar bus is taking him though the center of the state along the politically important I-4 corridor that separates Democratic-leaning southern Florida from the Republican-leaning north.

It's Obama's third campaign bus tour since July after earlier road trips in Ohio and Iowa. The bus trips attract significant media attention in the states and allow Obama to engage with local voters in unscheduled stops in small towns.

On Saturday, he stopped at a Cuban restaurant in West Tampa, where he mingled with customers, took pictures and ordered five "honey Cuban" sandwiches.

Obama is eager to connect with voters in the middle, and he enlisted Florida's former Republican governor Charlie Crist in the cause. Crist, now an independent, spoke at the Democratic National Convention, and he introduced Obama in Seminole, telling the crowd that Obama was "working hard for the middle class," for Florida and the nation.

Obama had a hug for Crist, and said his support shows "the values that we're fighting for are not Democratic values or Republican values, they are American values."

At Obama's second rally of the day, before 3,000 people in Kissimmee, he had a ready answer to Romney's complaints about defense cuts.

"As long as I'm commander in chief, we will sustain the strongest military the world has ever known," he said. He said he would use some of the money that had been used to fight wars for rebuilding schools and roads and bridges in the U.S. There is actually no such leftover pot of money because the wars were fought primarily by borrowing.

Former President Bill Clinton will be campaigning for Obama in Florida in the coming week after giving a strong endorsement of the president's first term that was a highlight of the Democratic National Convention.

The Obama campaign sent Vice President Joe Biden to Ohio, another electoral battleground, where he mocked the Republicans for belatedly "discovering" the middle class.

Speaking to a crowd in Zanesville, Biden reminded voters of Romney's opposition to the president's auto industry bailout and asked if Republicans truly believe that had Romney been president, "there would be today, 115,000 auto jobs in Ohio."

Rep. Paul Ryan, Romney's running mate, was dispatched to California, for an evening fundraiser in Fresno, a rare departure from the battleground states dominating the campaign itinerary.

Overall, polls show that the candidates are neck-and-neck in what looks to be one of the closest presidential contests in recent memory.

Both campaigns are zeroing in on about eight or so closely contested battleground states that do not reliably vote Republican or Democratic. The presidential election will not be decided by popular vote but in state-by-state contests.