SAINT PETERSBURG, Florida, Sept 8(AFP) -US President Barack Obama turned his attention to the state of Florida yesterday as he fended off attacks by Republican rival Mitt Romney, who used a weak US jobs report to accuse the president of failing to mend the economy. Florida, where the president will spend two days, is one [...]

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Obama courts Florida after poor jobs report

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SAINT PETERSBURG, Florida, Sept 8(AFP) -US President Barack Obama turned his attention to the state of Florida yesterday as he fended off attacks by Republican rival Mitt Romney, who used a weak US jobs report to accuse the president of failing to mend the economy.

President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden back on the campaign (AFP)

Florida, where the president will spend two days, is one of 12 so-called battleground states that don’t have a pronounced political preference and whose voters will likely determine the outcome of the November 6 election.

On Friday, the Republican nominee seized on weak employment data to reclaim momentum on the campaign trail and double down on Obama, whose speech at the Democratic National Convention the previous night was criticized for lacking vigor.
Romney flew into the battleground farming state of Iowa just ahead of Obama, but then moved on to New Hampshire, where he twisted the knife on his opponent.

“This president has not taken responsibility for what has been a failure of his economic policies,” Romney told around 4,000 people who filled a small baseball stadium in Nashua, New Hampshire’s second city.

The poor job numbers gave him the opportunity to wrest back the conversation after three days dominated by the Democrats’ jamboree, which Romney said failed to deliver any new plans that could turn around the fortunes of US families.

“Instead it was a whole new series of promises. He didn’t deliver on the last ones, why should we expect him to deliver on these? He is out of ideas, he’s out of excuses,” Romney said of Obama’s pitch for a second term. As Democrats left Charlotte, the North Carolina city that hosted their gala, a mood that was previously buoyant thanks to stirring speeches by First Lady Michelle Obama and former president Bill Clinton suffered a reality check. Friday’s report from the Labor Department, which revealed that just 96,000 jobs were created last month, was the cause of their woe. And although the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent in August, from 8.3 percent previously, the reduction was caused by a shrinking Labor force caused by despairing Americans who chose to abandon their search for work.

“If President Obama were re-elected, we would have four more years of the last four years, and the American people are going to say no to that,” Romney told a 2,600-strong crowd crammed into a gymnasium in Orange City, Iowa. The dismal job numbers cast a shadow over the president’s post convention tour of New Hampshire, Iowa and Florida.

Obama and Romney later crossed paths. The president and vice president Joe Biden flew in separate planes from New Hampshire to Iowa, which they won in 2008 but where they now face a tight fight against Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan.
Opinion polls have the candidates running neck-and-neck, with the November 6 election result likely to be decided by voters in half a dozen swing states.




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