Mitt Romney said Tuesday that President Obama's recent statements on the campaign trail were a bunch of "Obama-loney" and misrepresented his positions on key economic issues, as the rival campaigns battles to appeal to middle-class voters.
“We’ve been watching the President say a lot of things about me and about my policies and they’re just not right," Romney said during an interview with Fox News. "And if I were to coin a term it would be Obama-loney. He’s serving up a dish which is simply in contradiction of the truth and it relates to everything from how I’m going to help the middle class to tax policy."
Romney charged Obama with "simply saying things that are not accurate."
"I’d like to see a campaign really about the ideas and the solutions to get America working again as opposed to all of this stuff he’s serving up,” he added.
Romney also said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had "lost a lot of credibility" for his suggestion that the presumptive GOP nominee had not paid taxes for a decade.
"I don’t really believe that he’s got any kind of a credible source," Romney said. "I don’t know who gave him this line of reasoning, whether it came from the White House or the [Democratic National Committee] or a staffer but he ought to say where it came from and then we can find out whether that person has any credibility."
Romney went on to push his campaign's recent attacks on Obama's change to a law governing the distribution of welfare funds to states. Democrats say the change gives states more flexibility in distributing welfare — something requested by GOP governors — while the Romney campaign has accused the president of "gutting" Clinton-era welfare reforms by removing the work requirement.
"Well I think his perspective is that more and more people ought to have the capacity to be part of the welfare system and they shouldn’t have to have the work requirement that President Clinton and Republicans put in place some years ago," Romney said. "I happen to think that a work requirement is essential as part of the welfare experience and I actually believe we should have increasing levels of work requirement as opposed to eliminating them as the president has taken by executive action.”
Romney downplayed charges from the White House and Obama campaign that his attacks contradict his stance from when he served as Massachusetts governor, pointing to a 2005 letter, signed by Romney, requesting greater flexibility and more waivers on welfare distribution in the state.
"I am all in favor of flexibility for states. I am not in favor of reducing the work requirement," Romney said. "Flexibility for states, allowing states to craft their own programs to care for their own people in the way they think best makes all the sense in the world. And as governor time and again I fought to increase the work requirements."
Romney campaigned earlier Tuesday in suburban Chicago, and heads Wednesday to Iowa, a pivotal swing state with six electoral votes up for grabs.
