Obama campaign: Taking ‘God’ off coins as likely as alien attack

The Obama campaign says Mitt Romney’s campaign rhetoric Saturday where he said he would not “take God off our coins” is comparable to arguing that President Obama believes aliens will attack.

Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaski called Romney’s suggestion about God being removed from U.S. coins the sign of a "desperate" campaign.

“Look, this is nothing more than a desperate attack based on a false premise by the Romney team and its sad that the debate has been driven to this level of discourse,” Psaki told reporters Sunday, according to a White House pool report.

“The president believes as much that God should be taken off a coin as he does that aliens will attack Florida,” she said. “It’s an absurd question to be raised.”

At a campaign appearance in Virginia Beach, Va., Saturday, Romney incorporated the Pledge of Allegiance into his stump speech as he criticized Democrats for initially removing God from their party platform.

“That pledge says ‘under God,’ and I will not take God out of our platform,” Romney said. “I will not take God off our coins, and I will not take God out of my heart.”

Democrats quickly pounced at Romney talk about taking God off of U.S. coins, something that has not been suggested by President Obama.

White House press secretary Jay Carney joined in the criticism as well Sunday, saying the line was like throwing spaghetti on the wall.

“There’s a period when the argument is not going your way… and you begin to see random issues thrown up like spaghetti against the wall to see if anything can stick,” Carney said. “I wouldn’t say based on my experience covering presidential campaigns that that has ever worked as a strategy.”

A Romney campaign official said the governor's comments were "nothing new."

"Democrats are defensive about this issue since their embarrassing platform debacle last week," the aide said. "Gov. Romney has repeatedly discussed his opposition to attempts to make our country a more secular nation. He has been saying this even before Obama became President."

---