Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney took a break from three days of debate prep on Thursday to hurl more criticism at President Barack Obama.
He intentionally took aim at the Democratic incumbent on the same day the president formally accepted his party’s nomination to run again for the highest office in the land, charging Obama with failing to keep promises he made to the American people.
“Over the last four years, the president has said he was going to create jobs for the American people and that hasn’t happened,” Romney said from New Hampshire. “He said he would cut the deficit in half, and that hasn’t happened. He said that incomes would rise and instead incomes have gone down. I think this is a time for him not to start restating new promises, but to report on the promises he made. I think he wants a promises reset.”
Romney has spent the last few days at the Vermont home of his former Massachusetts lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey, preparing for October’s three presidential debates. Many of his top advisors made the trip to help critique his mock debates with Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, who was serving as the stand-in for Obama. Portman did likewise for 2008 Republican nominee John McCain.
By all accounts, President Obama is a much more gifted orator, but he will have Massachusetts Sen. And 2004 Democratic presidential contender John Kerry working for him as Romney’s stand-in.
Both President Obama and Romney will return to the states where the presidential race began on Friday, crisscrossing paths as they both campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire.
The competitive Romney admitted that Portman had gotten the better of him in their first few sessions.
“I’m just glad I won’t be debating Rob Portman in the final debates,” he told reporters Wednesday during a stop at a pizza place in West Lebanon, N.H., near a building supply company where he did a series of interviews.
Romney initially said he no plans to watch any of the Democratic Convention in Charlotte, but later doubled back to reporters, telling them he’d heard that Obama would be alluding to some of the promises that he made in his 2008 campaign.
“I saw the promises last time,” he said. “Those are promises he did not keep, and the American people deserve to know why he did not keep his promises.”
