Mitt Romney’s campaign on Sunday unveiled a new television ad contrasting the GOP challenger’s record as former Massachusetts governor with President Obama’s first term.
The ad hits the president, using a recent clip of Obama telling voters “you can’t change Washington from the inside.”
“He says he's only had 4 years. That's all Mitt Romney needed,” a narrator says in the new ad.
“He turned Massachusetts around, cut unemployment, turned the deficit he inherited into a rainy day fund. All with an 85 percent Democratic legislature,” the ad continues. “Some can't live up to their promises. Others find a way.”
The Romney campaign did not specify the extent of the ad buy or which states it will air in.
The Romney team has seized on Obama’s “inside” remark before, charging the president with throwing a “white flag of surrender.”
The president made the comment last month at a forum in Miami, Fla. hosted by Univision, where he was asked about his biggest failures in his first term.
“I’ve learned some lessons,” Obama said. “Most important is you can’t change Washington from inside, only from the outside. That’s how some of our biggest accomplishments like healthcare got done — mobilizing the American people.”
Republicans said the remark undermined Obama’s own case for a second term, but Democrats hit back with Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith saying that “Romney apparently doesn’t believe that change comes from the American people.”
The new ad comes as Romney adopted a fresh attack on Friday, accusing the president’s campaign of having “no agenda for the future,” and saying that his bid would be about “big ideas, bold ideas, a strong agenda.”
"We’re going to get America working again and that’s why you’re going to help elect the two of us,” Romney said at a campaign rally in Florida with running mate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.)
Earlier Friday, the Obama team accused the GOP candidate of walking back from many policy positions and mischaracterizing his record to win centrist voters in key swing states, saying that Romney was suffering from “Romnesia.”
