Reuters Reports: Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign scrambled on Monday to fight challenges on two fronts: fellow Republican Newt Gingrich’s momentum and new Democratic accusations of Romney’s frequent flip flopping on policies.
The former Massachusetts governor launched a media assault against President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy, after Democrats released a biting new ad that accused the Republican of changing his policy positions with the political winds.
Romney also vowed to fight for every vote in New Hampshire, where he suffered a setback at the weekend when a leading newspaper endorsed Gingrich as a better choice for conservative voters.
Long a frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Obama in next year’s election, Romney has seen Gingrich catch up in national polls and threaten his dominance in New Hampshire, where the first primary is held on Jan 10.
His spokeswoman Andrea Saul pledged that Romney would fight for every vote in the state, where he has a double-digit poll lead.
“We’re going to go person to person, vote to vote, trying to earn every single vote in New Hampshire because Governor Romney knows that this is an important election and he wants to take his message directly to each voter,” Saul told MSNBC.
The Democratic National Committee put further pressure on Romney by launching elaborate video spots calling him “two men trapped within one body” for changing position on issues from immigration to climate change.
Romney’s campaign quickly organized at least a dozen media conference calls in which supporters said Obama was trying to distract from the sputtering economy, the issue expected to be at the center of the 2012 fight for the White House.
“Before the first vote in the Republican primary is even cast, the Democrats are blasting Mitt Romney and trying to tear him down and I think the reason for that is they don’t want to focus on their own failure,” former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty said on one call.
The intense counterattack was a first by Romney’s team, which has largely focused on touting his record as a former governor and businessman more able than his rivals to defeat Obama and fix the economy.
“My sense is that Romney’s team likes it when Obama attacks him because it plays into the electability argument that Romney thinks is his greatest strength strategically,” said Republican consultant Matt Mackowiak
