President Obama's campaign on Saturday doubled down in their attacks against Mitt Romney in a new video, a day after the GOP candidate called for an apology from the president.
The new ad opens with a clip of Romney's interview with ABC from Friday, where the presumptive GOP nominee demanded an apology from Obama over allegations that Romney misled the public over his tenure at Bain Capital.
"Is this the level that the Obama campaign is willing to stop to?" Is this up to the standards of the presidency of the United States? Let's talk about what it takes to get America working again and help the American people," Romney says in the clip.
A title card reading "Talk about the issues?" than airs, followed by clips of Romney's attacks on Obama from the campaign trail, including comments about the president's controversial former pastor Jeremiah Wright and characterizations of Obama's foreign policy as an "appeasement strategy."
The ad then airs onscreen text reading: "Mitt Romney. He sure asks for a lot of apologies. When he's not busy launching attacks."
The ad closes with a clip from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) during the GOP primaries when he contested Romney for the nomination.
"He has a basic policy of carpet bombing his opponent. He doesn't try to build up Mitt Romney, he just tears down whoever he is running against," says Gingrich, who had a protracted and bitter fight with Romney before exiting the race.
The White House Saturday also defended the attacks on Romney, which accuse him of helping American companies move jobs overseas while at Bain and include calls for him to release more tax records and allow more public scrutiny of his personal finances.
Deputy communications director Jen Psaki told reporters that Obama wanted to focus on issues that "the American people actually care about" and called for a high-brow debate."
But she said the focus on Romney’s business experience, which he touts as a positive was fair game for the Obama team.
The campaign hasn’t pulled any punches. Another video released earlier Saturday also hit Romney on his business record, this time also mocking his singing, by playing a clip of him performing "America the Beautiful" at a campaign rally earlier this year.
Democrats have jumped on reports last week which detailed records filed with the Securities and Exchange commission suggesting Romney may have been working at private equity firm Bain Capital years after he said he had left.
Another report in Vanity Fair discussed Romney's offshore accounts in Switzerland, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.
The fight between the campaigns intensified after Obama team spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter questioned whether Romney had been honest about his tenure at Bain, leading Romney to demand an apology from the president during an interview Friday with ABC.
The Romney campaign has denied that Romney used tax havens to evade U.S. tax laws or that he stayed at Bain Capital beyond 1999 or profited from companies shipping jobs abroad.
“As the failures of his presidency become more evident, Barack Obama has resorted to the tactics of a typical politician – dishonest and totally unsubstantiated attacks meant to distract from his own record by smearing the reputation of his opponent,” said Romney campaign spokesman Amanda Henneberg in response to the attacks.
