Romney wants his risky pick to play it safe

GLEN ALLEN, Va. (AP) — Mitt Romney wants running mate Paul Ryan to play it safe.

Ryan, the nation's most controversial budget architect, is often described as the intellectual leader of the House Republican caucus. But Romney's presidential campaign headquarters in Boston seems, for now, to prefer that the 42-year-old father of three talks about camping and milking cows instead of the fiscal proposals that made him a conservative hero.

Ryan, who wrote a plan to overhaul Medicare as chairman of the House Budget Committee, did not use the word "Medicare" with voters over the first four days as the vice presidential candidate. When he finally touched on the health care insurance program for seniors, he did so only in broad strokes after Romney himself first outlined the campaign's talking points.

"We will not duck the tough issues," Ryan said Friday in Virginia. "We will lead."

But Ryan has been directed to avoid taking questions from reporters who travel with him, and to agree only to a few carefully selected interviews. He is known for sketching budget graphs on napkins to explain his ideas, but this past week it was Romney who used a white board during a news conference to help detail his own plan — one he says is virtually identical to Ryan's.

"I'm joining the Romney ticket," Ryan told an Ohio television station this week. "It's not the other way around. So I'm supporting the Mitt Romney plan."

Some of the Republican Party's most passionate voters see it a different way. Reluctant to support Romney during the GOP primary, they favor Ryan and his ideas more than the former Massachusetts governor who will head the party's ticket.

Romney hopes that Ryan's conservative credentials and his boyish enthusiasm will help him solidify support from the base of his party and close the "likability gap" with President Barack Obama, who remains relatively popular in spite of the nation's struggling economy.

Yet Romney does not want Ryan's plans to overshadow his own candidacy. Advisers suggest that Ryan's role will change over time. He is eager to do more, and a week after his selection became official, there are already signs that he's beginning to play a more active role.

The congressman planned to visit a retirement village in Florida on Saturday, where he was expected to help reassure nervous seniors that his plans are designed to save Medicare, not end it. Still, Romney's campaign managers want him to proceed with caution.

Romney's team remembers well the problems caused by running mates who may have been trusted prematurely to play a prominent role in a presidential race — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in 2008 and Sen. Dan Quayle in 1988, among them.

The Republican presidential campaign has gone to great lengths to remind voters that Romney's way rules.

Before Ryan first addressed Medicare in Ohio this week, large signs were placed in front of and behind the podium reading, "The Romney Plan." After spending his first two days campaigning with Romney, Ryan will be at his side again in the week ahead for at least one campaign appearance.

The candidates, labeled as "America's Comeback Team" in Romney's campaign signs, are set to appear together in New Hampshire's largest city on Monday. It is expected to be first of what may be many joint appearances in the coming days.

When they are together, the gregarious Ryan helps Romney shed his sometimes wooden image, and they seem to draw larger crowds together than Romney does on his own.

Just don't expect Ryan to start charting his Medicare plans on stage. His proposal to turn the guaranteed health care program for people 65 and over into a voucher-like system creates significant political challenges for the Romney-Ryan ticket — and for Republicans across the country. Many seniors don't fully understand the proposal, and Obama's re-election campaign is aggressively condemning the plan as something that would "end Medicare as we know it."

That's largely why Romney is easing Ryan into the debate. While Ryan explained his complicated plans at length during dozens of Medicare town hall-style meetings before becoming Romney's running mate, those kinds of meetings probably are over because they're considered too politically dangerous to continue.

Instead, Ryan is being encouraged to discuss his young children, his working-class background and his love of the outdoors as the American people get to know him.

"Let's play stump the running mate later. Right now I want to enjoy the fair," Ryan said when asked about Medicare at the Iowa State Fair.

"We do cow-milking contests in Wisconsin," he continued. "I usually lose to a 17-year-old woman who grew up on a dairy farm, who's wearing like a sash and tiara."

Despite the cautious approach, Romney's advisers are expecting Ryan to stumble at times early on as his record faces unprecedented scrutiny. Already, some concerns have popped up.

He reversed course on Thursday and acknowledged lobbying the government for stimulus money after twice denying he had done so. The admission came only after the release of letters, with his signature, asking for millions of the program's dollars on behalf of two companies in his home state.

And while he has tried to avoid diving into the specifics of his Medicare plan, a reporter pushed him to explain an apparent contradiction during an impromptu lunch meeting in Ohio.

In the interview, Ryan said he never would have included a $700 billion Medicare cut in his budget if Obama hadn't done it first.

"He put those cuts there," Ryan said of the president. "We would never have done it in the first place."

The defense represented a deviation from the Romney campaign's talking points and overshadowed what was supposed to be a made-for-TV stop at local hotdog restaurant.

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How Romney picked Ryan and kept it secret

Ryan and Romney in Ashland, Va. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

CHARLOTTE--Just hours before word broke that Mitt Romney would name his vice-presidential running mate on Saturday, Paul Ryan waved to reporters camped outside his home in Janesville, Wis., as he headed inside for the evening—or so the media thought.

Just minutes later, the Wisconsin congressman quickly snuck out his back door, escaping into a forest behind his house where he had played as a child in hopes of eluding reporters who had trailed his every movement for days. "I grew up in those woods," Ryan recalled on Saturday. "The house I grew up in backs up to the house I live in now so I know those woods like the back of my hand."

Paul briskly walked through a gully, past the tree where he had built a tree fort as a child, and toward the driveway of his childhood home. There, waiting in a car, was Andy Speth, Ryan's chief of staff and his closest adviser. Within seconds, Ryan had jumped in the car and the two sped away, heading towards a tiny airport just over the Illinois border from Wisconsin, where his wife and three young kids were already waiting.

Soon, the family was boarding a private jet headed toward Elizabeth City, N.C., a town just an hour from Norfolk, Va., where Ryan would be formally unveiled as Romney's VP pick on Saturday morning. It was among the last steps in Romney's highly coordinated but intensely secretive search for a running mate. It was a quest that left even some of Romney's closest friends and aides in dark up until the final hours before Ryan's name was announced.

The search began in May, just after Romney unofficially clinched the Republican nomination. Beth Myers, the longtime Romney aide who led the GOP candidate's search, told reporters Saturday she and the former Massachusetts governor came up with a short list of potential candidates early in the search—though she declined to say exactly who. Romney then phoned each of the candidates to see if they would be willing to go through the vetting—a process all of those asked agreed to, according to Myers.

At Romney's direction, Myers moved quickly to get the vetting operation in place, as the candidate strongly considered going against tradition and announcing a VP pick early in the summer. She hired a team of lawyers and reserved secure office space in Boston, featuring a room with a safe where the campaign kept its dossiers of financial and other personal information provided by its VP hopefuls. According to Meyers, no copies were made of the material and the paperwork was not allowed to leave the room—not even when Romney read the material.

While Romney ultimately decided to delay his pick until after his trip to the Olympics, Myers continued full speed ahead on the VP search. She met with the potential VPs, including at a donor retreat in Park City sponsored by the campaign in late June, seeking "clarification" on issues raised by their dossiers.

At the same time, Romney sought input from his senior staff and close friends about their thoughts on the VP process. Along the way, he campaigned with many of those on his short list, including Ryan.

But the presumptive Republican nominee didn't finalize his decision until Aug. 1—the day after he returned from his rocky overseas trip to Europe and Israel. In a meeting with Myers at his vacation home in Wolfeburo, N.H., Romney told his top aide he had settled on Ryan, with whom he had bonded when the two campaigned together ahead of the Wisconsin primary in April. He asked Myers to arrange a face-to-face meeting with the congressman.

On Aug. 5—the day before Romney began protective pool coverage with this traveling press corps, the campaign arranged for a discreet meeting between Romney and his then-potential VP.

"We gave a lot of thought on how to make this work," Myers said.

The campaign decided to fly Ryan from Chicago's O'Hare airport to Hartford, Conn.-where Myers arranged for him to be picked up by the person least likely to stoke suspicion among reporters trying to break the VP story: Her 19-year-old son, Curt. Driving a rented sports utility vehicle, he ferried Ryan, who was dressed in jeans, a baseball hat and sunglasses, to Myers' home in Brookline, Mass., pulling into the garage so the congressman could exit the car without being seen by the public.

The congressman then had lunch with Myers and her family—as a pared down Secret Service motorcade drove Romney from Wolfeburo to Myers' home. Upon arrival, the presumptive Republican nominee met with Ryan alone in Myers' dining room.

"We talked about the campaign and how it would be run and about how we'd work together if we get the White House, what the relationship would be and how we would interact," Romney told reporters on Saturday. "We talked about our families (and) what this meant for them, the challenge it meant."

Ryan accepted the job, and Romney headed back to New Hampshire, having successfully avoided media detection for 90 minutes. But before Ryan left, tragedy struck back home in his district, where a gunman opened fire at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek. Ryan quickly issued a statement on the shooting—not mentioning he was nowhere near Capitol Hill or in Wisconsin.

On Monday, Romney began reaching out to the VP hopefuls he rejected, including former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty-who was the first to learn from Romney that he was not his VP pick. At the same time, Romney aides began planning a vice presidential announcement in New Hampshire for Friday—plans that were scuttled at the last minute when Wisconsin officials announced a memorial for members of the Sikh temple shooting that Ryan couldn't miss.

According to Myers, Romney aides moved quickly to find another spot—settling on the USS Wisconsin in Norfolk—a site that was an obvious hint to the press corps, according to Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom, but failed to gain notice. On Friday, the campaign flew the Ryans into the Elizabeth City airport—hoping the airport was small enough that no one would spot Ryan and recognize him.

Both Ryan and Romney landed around 6pm--Ryan in North Carolina and Romney in Virginia. Myers, who was on the plane with Romney, told reporters she was going to visit family in the area, but instead drove to Elizabeth City, where she and the Ryans ate take-out from Applebee's for dinner in their rooms at a local Fairfield Inn.

Shortly after 11pm on Friday, the campaign publicly announced Romney would unveil his VP on Saturday morning. Her job finished, Myers turned off her phone and promptly went to sleep.

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Why Ryan is the antithesis of Romney

In 1996, bedeviled by conservative doubts about his tax-cutting credentials, Bob Dole named Jack Kemp -- the fervent champion of free-market economics – as his running mate. Sixteen years later, confronting lingering right-wing skepticism about his conservative pedigree, Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan – a former Kemp speechwriter – as his vice-presidential nominee.

Romney played against type in his surprise selection of the youthful seven-term Wisconsin congressman, who was considered a long-shot until the last few days. Rather than choosing a make-no-waves running mate like Ohio Sen. Rob Portman or former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Romney opted for a free-market ideologue over a political man for all seasons.

The veep choice is probably the best pre-election preview of how Romney would govern from the Oval Office. By going with Ryan -- whose well-publicized budget proposals put both traditional Medicare and Social Security in the cross-hairs – Romney is signaling that he can change direction with stunning speed. Instead of a predictable recite-America-the-Beautiful campaign designed to make Barack Obama the issue, Romney has added policy heft and controversy to his I-can-create-jobs bromides.

Introducing Ryan in Norfolk on Saturday morning, Romney called him “the next president of the United States.” (Obama made an analogous slip-up in 2008.) While it would take a Freudian to unpack what Romney meant subconsciously, it is safe to say that Ryan would provide the domestic agenda for Romney as the next president of the United States.

To Democrats, Paul Ryan is both literally and metaphorically two four-letter words. The Ryan budget, which passed the House in 2011 with only four dissenting Republican votes, would gradually turn Medicare into a voucher program and slash state funding for Medicaid. Although it is not in the House-passed plan, Ryan has also been a passionate advocate of private accounts for Social Security. The Romney-Ryan ticket is now on record as advocating the largest downsizing of popular federal programs since the ill-fated 1964 Barry Goldwater crusade.

What we still don’t have is an entirely reliable account of how and when Romney arrived at Ryan. Was he always the stealth favorite or was there a last-minute shift within the Mitt inner sanctum? The inside story will have to wait until the full how-a-great-man-makes-a-decision deliberate leaks from inside the Romney camp and, maybe, until the books published after the campaign.

The timing matters because there could be another less charitable interpretation of the route to Ryan – Romney can be rolled. In the last few days, both the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Weekly Standard enthusiastically endorsed Ryan for vice president. The New York Times captured the conservative mood with a Thursday headline: “Romney Faces Pressure from Right to Put Ryan on Ticket.”

Since early indications are that Romney decided on Ryan in the last 10 days, that pressure may have arrived as a seismic shock in Romney headquarters. If Romney actually abandoned Portman or Pawlenty to placate the GOP base, it suggests that he would govern by always nervously looking over his right shoulder.

Critics have sniffed that Ryan lacks the foreign-policy pedigree that Romney as a former governor needs. But, with the exception of Portman’s short stint as George W. Bush’s trade czar, the same can be said of all the apparent GOP finalists. At least Ryan offers nearly 14 years of congressional experience, which is more than you can say about current and former governors like Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie. And, by the way, the last ticket totally devoid of Washington credentials was the one nominated by the Republicans in 1948. And somehow, I suspect, Romney does not want to emulate Tom Dewey in grabbing defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Ryan is, in many ways, the antithesis of Romney. The 42-year-old congressman from Janesville has spent virtually his entire career in the public sector or in the think tank arena. Ryan has been a consistent true believer while Romney has -- to put it charitably -- followed a zigzag course. 

Back in 1998, during the Bill Clinton impeachment election, I came to Janesville to cover a hotly contested House race for an open seat featuring a 28-year-old wunderkind Republican named (what a coincidence) Paul Ryan. I recall the fledging candidate walking me around downtown Janesville to show the houses and the historical markers that trace his family’s influence on this small industrial city since the late nineteenth century.

But what stays with me was the earnestness and policy-oriented seriousness of Ryan, even then. When I asked him about Clinton’s conduct, he avoided the fire-breathing rhetoric that was a GOP staple that year and instead said softly, "I think the wrong way to go is to go down a partisan, bitter route." What he wanted to talk about was tax cutting and Jack Kemp with a dollop of Ayn Rand thrown in. When I suggested that his election over Democrat Lydia Spottswood would be interpreted as an endorsement of the Republican impeachment strategy, he replied, "I hope it isn't written that way. I hope it's interpreted that my ideas are better than hers.”

Despite the nearly three decades that separate them in age, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan embody the political principle that it is far better in career terms to reach Congress as a young man than someone more seasoned. (Biden was not yet 30 when he was elected to the Senate in 1972). For all their conflicting styles and ideologies, both vice-presidential candidates exude an enthusiasm for politics, the press and policy debates that Obama and Romney somehow lack.

In a recent interview with Ryan Lizza for a New Yorker profile, Ryan expressed his scorn for presidential candidates who “run on vague platitudes and generalities.” With his bold vice-presidential pick, Romney has embraced the a-choice-not-an-echo theory of presidential politics.

If nothing else, putting Paul Ryan on the ticket guarantees that the Oct. 11 vice-presidential debate will be destination television viewing. And however the politics sort themselves out, the 2012 presidential election has suddenly become interesting as well as merely important. 

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Romney requested 'several' years of tax returns of VP contenders

CHARLOTTE - Mitt Romney requested "several" years of tax returns from his potential running mates, a senior adviser to the candidate said Saturday, suggesting that those considered for the ticket may have been required to reveal more financial documents that the candidate himself.

In a briefing with reporters in Virginia Saturday, senior adviser Beth Myers, who was charged with headed the vice president selection process, declined to specify exactly how many years of tax returns were required, saying only that "several" were requested.

Several, by definition, implies more than two years.

Romney, who has been under intense pressure to release more of his own tax returns by both Democrats and members of his own party, has so far released his 2010 returns and an estimate for his 2011 returns.

The campaign has said that the full 2011 returns will be released sometime before the November election.

When asked why he does not put the criticism to rest and just release more of his tax returns, Romney has said that no matter how many he decided to make public, there will always be a call to give more.

And while Romney's own father, George Romney, released 12 years of tax returns during his bid for the presidency, the candidate today cites Sen. John McCain as the one who set the precedent to release just two years.

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Romney and Ryan to split up until convention

(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)MOORESVILLE, N.C.—Mitt Romney will spend just one more day campaigning with his new running mate, Paul Ryan, before the vice presidential hopeful splits on his own packed campaigning schedule.

The two men will spend the day Sunday traveling throughout North Carolina before heading to Ryan's home state of Wisconsin, where the two will headline what the Romney campaign has called a "homecoming rally" in Waukesha.

Then the GOP ticket will split: Romney will continue on his four-state bus tour, which traveling through Florida on Monday, while Ryan will kick of an intense week of campaigning and fundraisers beginning with an appearance at the Iowa State Fair on Monday.

"It's likely that they will be campaigning on different tracks until we get to the convention," Romney adviser Kevin Madden said Sunday.

Indeed, Ryan is set to have a busy week—at least in terms of fundraising. According to a schedule circulated among Romney's fundraising team, Ryan is set to headline 10 finance events between now and Aug. 25—the weekend before the Republican convention is set to begin in Tampa.

On Monday, Ryan is scheduled to headline a fundraising dinner in Colorado. He'll head to Ohio and Virginia on Thursday to raise money before appearing at a finance event in Tampa, Fla., on Friday.

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Romney renews welfare reform attack against Obama

Romney in Des Moines (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

DES MOINES, Iowa—For the second day in a row, Mitt Romney attacked President Barack Obama on welfare reform, accusing his Democratic opponent of ditching a work requirement for those receiving government assistance.

Speaking at a local high school, Romney charged that Obama was undermining welfare reforms signed into law by former President Bill Clinton. But he added a new argument, telling supporters here that Obama spoke out against the work requirement when he was a member of the Illinois Legislature.

Romney accused Obama of simply carrying out his "original intent" to dial back the Clinton-era reforms with a recent Department of Human Services directive that removed some federal work requirements in order to allow states to be more flexible in determining who could qualify for government assistance.

"It is wrong to make any change that would make America more of a nation of government dependency," Romney said. "We must restore work in welfare."

If elected, Romney vowed, he would roll back the DHS directive, telling supporters, "I want more people working if they're going to receive government assistance."

Romney's comment came just hours after Clinton issued a statement calling Romney's claims "not true." And it happened just a day after the Romney campaign released a television ad attacking Obama on welfare reform, a spot that used Clinton's image. On Tuesday, the White House and the Obama campaign trashed Romney's claims on welfare reform as "blatantly dishonest."

It was Romney's first visit to Iowa in more than a month. Taking the stage, he called Des Moines a "home away from home" and gave a shoutout to Centro, an Italian restaurant popular among media and political types in town covering the Iowa caucuses.

But Romney quickly became somber, arguing that Obama's policies have not helped Americans around the country who are struggling.

"It's tough to be in the middle class in America today," he said.

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Obama bracing to be outspent by Romney

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama was the first presidential candidate to raise more than $100 million in a month and in 2008 was the first to forgo public money for his campaign. Now, he faces the very real threat of being the first president to be outspent by a challenger.

Obama, who four years ago broke just about every fundraising record for a presidential hopeful, has now been forced to look his supporters in the eye and confess he might not keep pace with Republican Mitt Romney. It's a sobering realization for his campaign, which had imagined an unlimited budget for ads, offices and mail.

"I will be the first president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign," Obama wrote to supporters recently.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Conservatives just two years ago feared Obama would raise and spend a billion dollars in the 2012 campaign. Now, there is a real possibility that Romney and his official partners at the Republican National Committee could overtake Obama in total spending.

How did Obama go from fundraising juggernaut to money chaser in just four years?

In the early days of the 2007 primaries, he used fundraising success to puncture Hillary Rodham Clinton's aura of inevitability. Obama surpassed Clinton's primary fundraising in the first two quarters of that year — $25 million to Clinton's $20 million from January to April, and $31 million to Clinton's $21 million in the three months that followed.

The numbers shocked observers and inspired supporters to give even more to the fresh-faced, first-term senator from Illinois. But now that magic seems elusive.

"They bought into hope and change and they're not getting it. There's some buyers' remorse," said Greg Mueller, a Republican strategist who is a veteran of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaigns.

Then, the potential was so great that Obama became the first modern candidate to bypass the public financing available to presidential candidates, and the spending limits that come with it, since the system was created in 1976 in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

At the same time, Obama shunned independent groups that sought to help his campaign and told supporters not to give to them. In his mind, he simply didn't need them and urged allies to shut down independent efforts to attack rival John McCain. He preferred to level criticism of his choosing, on his own terms.

But two years later, midterm elections yielded defeats for Democrats who lost their majority in the House. Early fundraising reports in 2011 showed the Republican independent groups were awash in cash, and Obama relented. With an economy that hasn't recovered quickly enough for voters, he opted to accept whatever help he can find, giving the go-ahead for outside groups to raise and spend cash on his behalf. His top advisers now are helping the groups he once abhorred, but he sounds unhappy about it.

"In the next four months ... there's going to be more money spent than we've ever seen before. Folks writing $10 million checks to try to beat me, running ads with scary voices," Obama lamented at a fundraiser Tuesday in Texas.

Part of the about-face was fueled by the Republican primaries. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson donated $20 million to an independent group that, for a time, kept former House Speaker Newt Gingrich afloat. Adelson now is backing a pro-Romney group with at least another $10 million.

Like Obama's official campaign and its partners at the Democratic National Committee, outside groups on the Democratic side are at an admitted disadvantage.

"There's no doubt that Romney's campaign and the super PACs supporting him will outspend the president's campaign and the super PACs on our side," said Bill Burton, a former Obama aide who is now running an independent pro-Obama group. "There's more money on the Republican side."

Obama demonized Wall Street bankers and they responded by closing their wallets. He also has called on wealthier Americans to pay more in taxes — hardly an inspiration to donate, his advisers concede. For some of his most liberal supporters, he has not done enough to promote stronger unions or tougher environmental laws.

And, unlike four years ago, Obama is not campaigning as an optimistic vessel of hope and change.

Obama and his allied DNC committees raised $71 million in June, short of Romney's and Republicans' $106 million. Romney's June haul was just the second time in history that an American campaign and its partner committees passed the $100 million mark, and signals the 2012 GOP presidential fundraising could break Obama's 2008 record of $745 million. The reports also mark a second consecutive month Obama trailed his rival.

"We had our best fundraising month yet, and we still fell about $35 million short," campaign chief operating officer Ann Marie Habershaw told supporters in an email that asked for as little as $3 to help.

That's not to say Obama is broke or even certain to be outspent. And if he is, it's unlikely to become a determining factor in the election. While campaigns need money to pay staff, finance travel and buy television ads, money alone does not win elections when both candidates are financially competitive.

From the days when Obama and Romney formally announced their campaigns, Obama and his affiliated party groups have raised $552.5 million, compared with Romney's $394.9 million. The nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation broke down the numbers and noted that Romney would need to bring in $39.5 million more than Obama each month to exceed his total.

That leaves a steep climb for Romney, but not an impossible one. Conservatives who were skeptical of Romney now are rallying behind the GOP nominee after a topsy-turvy primary season that saw their favored candidates come up short. Polling shows Republicans eager to vote Obama out of office.

Romney's vice presidential selection in the coming weeks will create additional buzz and likely unleash a fundraising wave for the final months of the campaign.

Never before has an incumbent president failed to outraise a challenger, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog. In Obama's record-setting 2008 campaign, he made history in September by raising $150 million.

Now, it's Romney's turn to try to shatter that record — and for Obama to defend his.

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Romney camp: Obama taking Bain donations 'height of hypocrisy'

While Democrats assail presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's Bain Capital business practices, Republicans note that President Obama has not been bashful about accepting cash from Bain executives or other high-profile figures in the corporate buyout business.

"President Obama has based his entire reelection campaign on a vicious, dishonest assault on Mitt Romney's business career. The real question for President Obama is this: if Bain Capital is so bad, why have you taken nearly $120,000 in donations from them?" said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul. "President Obama's actions are the height of hypocrisy."

Obama and his re-election campaign have been hammering Romney for reaping huge profits at the helm of Bain, while companies in which the firm invested went bankrupt, laid off workers or outsourced jobs overseas.

"Romney and his partners put payments to themselves and their partners first, before anything else," David Foster, a former union leader at Bain-owned GST Steel, which later went bankrupt, told reporters on a conference call.

"I was the one who had to tell [the laid off workers] that Bain had broken its promises, underfunded their pensions and that they were on their own," he said, noting that Bain had devastated families and real lives.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks Federal Election Commission data, Obama has collected $118,121 from donors who list Bain as their employer between June 2004 and May 2012. The period covers Obama's bid for the Senate and his presidential campaigns.

One of Obama's top campaign financiers - Jonathan Lavine - is also managing director at Bain, bundling between $100,000 and $200,000 in contributions for the 2012 Obama Victory Fund, according to estimates released by the Obama campaign. The president has also relied on other leading figures in the private equity sector as hosts for high-dollar fundraisers and as members of his Jobs Council.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt denied there was a double standard, saying the attacks on Romney are not about Bain Capital or private equity but about the candidate's business record.

"Mitt Romney is the only person campaigning for president who says that during his tenure as a corporate buyout specialist his goal was job creation and that we should evaluate his qualifications for the presidency based on that record," LaBolt told reporters on a conference call.

"As the president has made clear when he's discussed this, the job of the President of the United States is to worry about the workers and the livelihoods of middle-class families just as much as it is to worry about profit creation," he said.

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Romney slams Obama’s attacks, won't release tax returns

(Evan Vucci/AP)Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama of running a campaign based on "falsehood and dishonesty" and brushed aside suggestions—including from some Republicans—that he should release more years of tax returns.

In a Monday interview with "Fox & Friends," the presumptive Republican nominee rejected a claim from Chicago Mayor and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who accused him over the weekend of  "whining" about attacks on his record at Bain Capital.

"I think when people accuse you of a crime you have a reason to go after them pretty hard, and I'm going to continue going after him," Romney said, arguing that Obama's attacks are "misdirected" and "dishonest." "What does it say about a president whose record is poor that all he can do in his campaign is attack me?"

Romney slammed Obama for running a "campaign based on falsehood and dishonesty," insisting it won't have "long legs" this fall. Asked if he should have been more aggressive in pushing back against Democratic attacks on his record at Bain, the ex-governor argued that the "best offense is to look at the president's record."

"Wouldn't it be interesting, Mr. President, if you spent some time looking at your record," Romney said.

Obama's attacks "may work in Chicago," Romney added, "but it won't work across America."

Romney ignored suggestions, including from a growing number of conservatives, that he should release more than two years of his tax returns, arguing it would only give more ammunition to the Obama campaign.

"John McCain ran for president and released two years of tax returns. John Kerry ran for president and his wife, who has hundreds of millions of dollars, she never released her tax returns. Somehow this wasn't an issue," Romney told Fox News. "The Obama people keep on wanting more and more and more, more things to pick through, more things for their opposition research to try and make a mountain out of and distort and to be dishonest about."

Romney insisted Americans care more about the economy and jobs than "attacks."

"The issue people care about is who can get the economy going again to help people have a brighter future," the presumptive GOP nominee said.

Romney's interview came as his campaign signaled a stronger pushback against the Obama campaign this week. On Monday, the campaign launched an attack on what it called Obama's "political payoff," accusing the president of working on behalf of campaign donors instead of the middle class.

In a statement to reporters, the Romney campaign accused Obama of "rewarding wealthy donors and administration insiders with taxpayer dollars." Among the examples they cited were federal loans to the failed energy company Solyndra, an example Romney has emphasized on the trail for months, and the Westly Group, a venture capital firm headed up by a major Obama donor whose portfolio of companies reportedly received tens of millions in economic stimulus money.

"Do you want to have an economy where political appointees in Washington, D.C. are making decisions about where investments go and where… taxpayer dollars is spent based on people's connections and how much money they raised in the last campaign cycle?" Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Romney said on a conference call with reporters. "Or do you want an economy that is driven by private sector investment decisions in allowing people to spend more of their hard earned money and make decisions for themselves?"

After days of blistering attacks from Democrats, Romney aides also aimed to counter perception that Obama's offensive is hurting Romney with voters. The campaign circulated a memo from Romney pollster Neil Newhouse that argued the race is closer than ever in spite of the Obama campaign outspending the Romney camp by millions of dollars in advertising. (The memo did not acknowledge the millions conservative groups supporting Romney's campaign have spent on the Republican candidate's behalf.)

"President Obama's campaign will never have a more substantial advertising advantage than it has had over the past few weeks, yet there is no evidence to suggest that the ballot has moved," Newhouse wrote. " If throwing the kitchen sink at Gov. Romney while leveraging a two-to-one ad-spending advantage doesn't move numbers for the president, that's got to tell you something about the state of the electorate."

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Republican governors to Romney: release tax returns

WILLIAMSBURG, Va.—The nation’s governors have a host of their own problems to worry about—that pesky Medicaid expansion for example—but that doesn’t mean they’re not keeping a close eye on 2012’s biggest ticket: the presidential election.

Asked on the sidelines of the National Governor’s Association annual meeting about their diagnosis of Mitt Romney’s campaign, the Republican governors had all kinds of advice for the candidate who comes from their ranks, from release-those-tax-returns-already to give-us-more-specifics.  

Despite the Beltway buzz and grumbling from some conservatives that the former Massachusetts governor has not been nimble or aggressive enough in responding to the Obama team’s attacks, many of the Republican governors here said Romney had hit on an economic message that voters in their states wanted to hear, and lauded his progress.

“I believe he’s moving down the right road, going in the right direction. Is he where he needs to be? No. But can he get there? Yes,” said Utah Gov. Gary Richard Herbert, referring to Romney’s numbers in several swing states, where he is trailing President Obama. “He’s come a long way since when he first ran four years ago and right now, in a dead heat with a current incumbent president who has all the powers of incumbency.” 

Herbert added, indignantly, “”I was in Utah when he was running the Olympics! He wasn't running Bain Capital.”

Despite another mediocre jobs report released this month, the political debate of the past week has been consumed with the question of how involved Romney was in the investment firm from 1999 to 2002, when Bain was investing in firms that outsourced jobs. Romney was on at least a partial leave of absence to run the Salt Lake City Olympics during that time. Filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission show that he was still the owner, chairman, CEO and president of Bain, but he says he wasn't managing the firm’s investments.

A series of media reports about Romney’s role and withering, relentless attacks by the Obama campaign prompted Romney to respond more forcefully than he has against past charges. He went on a media blitz Friday, doing a series of interviews on network television and demanding an apology from the Obama campaign for saying he had lied about his Bain involvement. Instead, the Obama campaign upped the ante Saturday with a potentially powerful new ad focused on outsourcing and the offshore tax shelters Romney listed on his 2010 tax return, the only one he has released so far.

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley found himself in hot water for perhaps a little too much candor when he said Romney would do well to release more tax returns, as Democrats have demanded  in recent weeks. “I think he ought to release everything. I believe in total transparency,” Bentley told reporters.  “You know if you have things to hide, then you may be doing things wrong.”

Bentley added, however, that the Obama campaign's focus on outsourcing was a diversionary tactic that voters would see through. “I do believe the Obama campaign is trying to cloud the issue by talking about Bain Capital because they don’t want to talk about 8.4 percent unemployment and I wouldn’t either!” Bentley said (slightly inflating the June jobless rate, which was 8.2 percent).  “If I were them, I’d be talking about all the other things too.”

At NGA—no surprise here--there was a blanket condemnation of the Democratic attacks from the Republican governors. “At the end of the day, people are going to reject that kind of nasty, negative campaign coming from the president of the United States,” said Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad.

The GOP governors said the sniping between the campaigns is irrelevant to people who are hurting for jobs, looking for a speedier recovery, and worried about the nation’s debt. “This fuss we see over this is just not the headline it apparently is inside the Beltway,” said Wyoming Gov. Matthew Mead. “If you ask people what they’re concerned about, they’re concerned about the future of our kids and our grandkids, they’re concerned about the national debt.”

Mead added that Romney had been quick to respond to the Bain attacks, a promising development. “Gov. Romney has made clear when he did these things and when he was in charge of Bain Capital and when he was not,” Mead said. “It’s a bit of a red herring in the sense that you’re talking about somebody that was in the private sector creating jobs and if you want to bring up that contrast, I think he compares quite well with President Obama.”

When asked about whether the Bain attacks had the potential to be damaging in his swing state, full of the white, blue-collar voters among whom they might have the most resonance, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett deflected. “I’m not doing surveys of the people of Pennsylvania,” he said. “You’re doing that. I’m much too busy to be doing those surveys.”

Some of the governors did say they would like to see more specificity from the Romney campaign as the election cycle moves toward the conventions. “It is not just enough to say repeal Obamacare, it’s repeal and replace it with what?” Herbert said. “I know governors are talking about that on the Republican side of the aisle, and we’re talking about it in Utah.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who last month survived a recall election provoked by his moves against public employee unions, encouraged Romney to follow in his mold and campaign as a bold, budget-balancing crusader. Voters were just beginning to receive a clearer economic message from him, Walker said. Now, they need more details on the budgetary end. 

“For him to do well, the R next to his name has to stand for more than just for Republican, it has to stand for reformer,” Walker said.  “We got significant swing votes, independents, even some discerning Democrats voting for me because they like someone who’s willing to take on the tough issues facing our state.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story omitted the Utah governor's first name. He is Gary Richard Herbert.

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Mitt Romney wants an apology

Mitt Romney disputed reports that he worked for Bain Capital longer than he had publicly suggested, insisting Friday he had no role "whatsoever" in managing the company after February 1999 when he left to run the Winter Olympics. Public filings from the company suggest otherwise.

In consecutive interviews with all five television news networks, Romney accused President Barack Obama and his campaign of attacking him on his record at Bain Capital in order to "deflect attention" from Obama's "failed" economic record. And he called on Obama to apologize for the false attacks.

"There is absolutely no evidence that I had any role whatsoever in the management of Bain Capital after February 1999," Romney told ABC News' Jon Karl. "Why the president continues and his people continue to make these kinds of charges and try to turn this into something big is clear, I think, to the American people because the president's failed to do the job he was elected to do which was to get this economy turned around."

Asked by Karl about an Obama campaign aide's assertion that he may have committed a "felony" by leaving his name on Securities and Exchange Commission documents if he didn't work at Bain, Romney called the charge "ridiculous and disturbing" and "beneath the dignity of the president and his campaign."

"The president needs to take control of his people," Romney said, calling the attacks "false and misleading."

On Thursday, the Boston Globe reported that Romney's name remained on several documents Bain had filed with the SEC, including a 2002 filing that described him as the firm's "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer and president."

Asked why his name remained on documents if he wasn't involved in the company, Romney told ABC that he had "retained ownership" until he and Bain officials could negotiate a departure and retirement package with the company. He told CBS News' Jan Crawford he had the "capacity" to return to Bain if he wanted after the Olympics but chose not to. He told Crawford he didn't "recall even coming back once" for Bain management meetings because he was running the Olympics "full time."

Asked by CNN's Jim Acosta about Democratic pressure for him to release additional tax returns and financial information about his investments overseas, Romney insisted he had "complied with the law" by filing federal financial disclosures and by releasing his 2010 tax returns. He said he would release his full 2011 returns when they are complete and suggested he wouldn't release more.

"That's all that's necessary for people to understand something about my finances," Romney told CNN.

Romney's round of interviews came after days of withering attacks from the Obama campaign on the presumptive Republican nominee's business record and personal finances. For days, the Romney campaign declined to engage the offensive, instead keeping its focus on Obama's handling of jobs and the economy.

But amid criticism from Republicans that Romney was endangering his campaign by ignoring the Obama attacks, the GOP seemed to shift course, releasing a series of TV ads trashing Obama for lying about Romney's record.

On Friday, the campaign scheduled a last-minute round of interviews with Romney in New Hampshire, where the candidate is set to spend this weekend off the campaign trail. In the interviews, Romney tried to shift the attention back to Obama's negative campaigning.

Asked if he believes he's being "swift-boated" by Democrats—a reference to independent attacks on John Kerry during the 2004 campaign—Romney told CNN he "hadn't heard that term." He told Acosta that Obama appears to be employing the "Kill Romney" strategy "they promised," referring to a phrase first floated by Democratic strategists in a Politico story last year.

In nearly all of the interviews, Romney mentioned the phone call he received in May from Obama once he clinched the nomination, telling reporters that Obama had told him he wanted to engage in an "important debate" about the state of the country and said he had "agreed" with the president. He told Fox News' Carl Cameron he found Obama's attacks "very disappointing" and "politics a lot worse than usual."

"(Americans) expected more from this president. He was the one that talked about a post-partisan presidency, changing the way politics works, changing the way Washington works. And I think people assumed he would make it better," Romney said. "But instead, with the kinds of attacks that he's been launching over the last several weeks, he's been making it worse and people recognize that."

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Romney: Obama immigration policy impedes permanent citizenship

MILFORD, N.H.—Mitt Romney said he believes President Obama's decision to allow as many as 800,000 young illegal immigrants to apply for work permits and temporary legal status will ultimately make it harder for immigrants to gain permanent citizenship.

Making a short statement to reporters after a campaign event here, Romney said he believes Obama's executive order is merely a temporary fix.

"I believe the status of young people who came here through no fault of their own is an important matter to be considered and resolved on a long term basis so that they know what their future will be in this country," Romney said. "I think the actions the president took today make it more difficult to reach a long term solution because an executive order is, of course, just a short term matter than can be reversed by subsequent presidents."

Romney, who spoke to reporters for just over a minute, said he "agrees" with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has called for a "long-term solution," and vowed, if elected, to offer "clarity" to immigrants who came here through "no fault of their own" but by their parents' action.

Romney ignored shouted questions from reporters, who asked if he would roll back Obama's policy if elected or if he views his Democratic opponents as motivated by politics.

The Republican nominee's statement came after reporters repeatedly pressed the campaign for a reaction to Obama's news. His campaign initially offered no reaction and suggested Romney would remain silent on the issue. But the candidate had a change of heart after today's second stop on his bus tour, offering a brief statement to his traveling press corps.

Romney immediately walked away from the microphone when he was done making his remarks, but didn't enjoy an immediate escape. As reporters shouted questions, the Republican nominee fumbled with the door of his campaign bus, but he was locked out. Aides immediately rushed to knock on the door to alert his driver to allow the candidate back in, as his staff awkwardly laughed.

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'Simply hypocrisy': Obama camp slams Romney remarks

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Team Obama skewers Romney on tax fairness

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Isn't it "marvelous?" Obama seeks to define Romney for voters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When President Barack Obama criticized Mitt Romney by name this week for embracing a controversial Republican budget proposal, he worded his attack carefully and with bite.

"(Romney) said that he's 'very supportive' of this new budget, and he even called it 'marvelous' -- which is a word you don't often hear when it comes to describing a budget," Obama said during a speech on Tuesday, before adding:

"It's a word you don't often hear generally."

The desired effect was clear: tie Romney directly to mostly unpopular plans for budget cuts and emphasize that the former executive is out of touch by lampooning his use of a seemingly out of date adjective.

After watching quietly while Republican candidates fought each other, Obama is now trying to define his likely opponent in November as an out-of-touch multi-millionaire who would cut social programs for the elderly and the middle class while promoting policies to help the rich.

Obama's riff on Romney's use of the word "marvelous" to describe Representative Paul Ryan's budget plans carried a subtle message.

"It's a word you kind of associate with the upper class, and I think that the intention was to tweak Romney for being wealthy and, you know, sort of brought up in the kinds of circles where they would say ‘marvelous,'" said Kenneth Sherrill, a political science expert at New York's Hunter College.

"That's trying to get under his skin a little bit."

The attack - which Obama repeated at a fundraiser on Thursday night - is a sign of things to come.

Obama's campaign has worked steadily to construct an image of an insensitive and patrician Romney even before he wins the Republican nomination, hoping to create a caricature that sticks with voters once the election officially becomes a two-man race.

Romney has made similar efforts to define Obama, portraying him as unprepared and unable to handle the country's economic challenges. And he began the process earlier, deliberately focusing his critiques on the president rather than the other Republican challengers.

The back and forth is a foreshadowing of what is likely to be a very nasty campaign. Hunter College's Sherrill said both candidates were likely to get very negative.

"This will be a spectacularly aggressive and negative campaign in the general election," he said. "I think that the principals - the candidates themselves - are going to go after one another pretty strongly."

NASTY CAMPAIGN AHEAD

Yet former constitutional law lecturer Obama can only go so far with charges that Romney is an elitist.

"It looks to me like what Obama's trying to do is two things: one is run on class warfare ... and (two) just demonize his opponent," said Charlie Black, a former adviser to 2008 Republican nominee John McCain who is now advising Romney.

"A president who's also wealthy and went to Harvard is not going to win on class warfare."

Obama's campaign is already drawing contrasts in areas where it perceives Republicans to be weak. Obama regularly brings up his support for immigration reform at political fundraisers, a dig at Romney's hard line against illegal immigration.

Hispanics, who could provide the swing votes needed to win battleground states such as Colorado and Nevada, largely back Obama in polls.

His campaign is also targeting women, another critical voting bloc that Democrats want in their column.

Obama spoke at a conveniently timed forum on women and the economy at the White House on Friday, making reference to influential women in his life as well as his appointment of two women to the Supreme Court.

This line seems to be working. Polls show support for Obama among women is increasing, while Republicans have lost ground due to conservative stances on birth control.

On healthcare, Obama advisers gleefully describe the president's 2010 reform law as modeled on Romney's own effort in Massachusetts, reminding conservative Republicans of the candidate's moderate past

Obama will also bring renewed attention on Tuesday to the "Buffett rule," a measure to raise taxes on the wealthy, which Republicans oppose.

"Obama's smart enough to know ... (that) many people in the public are perceiving Romney as an elitist who does not have sympathy for workers or the poor," said Mark Rom, an associate professor of government at Georgetown University.

"Anything he can do to reinforce that image, he'll take the opportunity to do."

But with unemployment still high and job creation advancing only slowly, Republicans see an opening, no matter how much Obama defines himself as a middle class champion.

"Middle class voters want to see economic growth and more jobs. They're anxious about the future of our economy," said Romney adviser Kevin Madden.

"Middle-class Americans have lost faith in President Obama because his basic message in this economic slowdown is that 8 percent unemployment is the new normal, and other rising cost pressures like high gas prices and rising health care costs are all someone else's fault."

(This story corrects spelling of Buffett in paragraph 23)

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Todd Eastham)

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Poll: Romney leads in Santorum's home state

HARRISBURG, Penn. -- Three weeks before the Pennsylvania Republican primary, a state poll shows Mitt Romney leading Rick Santorum by five percentage points.

Santorum, who trails Romney by hundreds of delegates, has acknowledged that Pennsylvania is a must-win for his campaign. Santorum represented the state in Congress from 1991-2007.

Here's the breakdown from the Public Policy Polling survey:

Mitt Romney: 42

Rick Santorum: 37

Ron Paul: 9

Newt Gingrich: 6

Last month, Romney polled at just 25 percent to Santorum's 43 percent in Pennsylvania, a positive swing of 17 percentage points for Romney.

"The momentum in Pennsylvania is moving completely against Rick Santorum," said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm.

The survey of 402 likely Republican voters in Pennsylvania has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

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Newt Gingrich says he's in until Romney reaches 1,144

WILMINGTON, N.C. - Spring allergies took their toll on Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. In a scratchy, barely recognizable voice, he told a crowd here he expected to do well in North Carolina and set a "new tone" for the Arkansas, Texas and California primaries.

Gingrich said he slept 13 hours on Tuesday but still couldn't shake his illness. Another thing annoying Gingrich, possibly even more than a stuffy nose, is the talk among pundits that he is dropping out of the race soon.

"Until [Romney] becomes the nominee, I'm staying in the race. And in order to be the nominee, he has to get 1,144 uncontested delegates. He has not done that yet," Gingrich said.

In a news conference, a reporter said to Gingrich, "Clearly you have no intention of getting out of the race," to which Gingrich interrupted, "I want to commend you for being the first reporter to state the obvious."

Gingrich said he, Romney and Santorum said they would support the eventual nominee. He didn't believe the words of their past would come back to haunt them in the general election.

"It doesn't matter because they just make stuff up anyway," Gingrich said.

Gingrich told ABC News he is still in the race to win the nomination, not just to take away delegates from Romney.

"I'm trying to get to an open convention to see what would happen," he said. "I mean, I'm not going to beat Romney head to head, but it's conceivable that between Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and me, we'll have enough delegates to have an open convention, and if we have an open convention, the truth is, nobody knows what would happen."

Gingrich has only won the majority of votes in South Carolina and his home state of Georgia, and gathered a total 135 delegates, compared to Santorum's overall count of 278 and Romney's 655.

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Romney vs. Obama heats up as Santorum fades away

(Justin Sullivan/Getty)

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum verbally circled April 24 (the Pennsylvania primary, 71 delegates at stake) and May 29 (the Texas primary, 155 delegates at stake) on his nomination calendar Tuesday night in his speech to supporters. But those goals fail to reflect the reality that he has now slid into irrelevancy in the race.

Perhaps the most important words from the Santorum camp Tuesday night  came not from the candidate, but from his senior strategist. "We think regardless of results today, Pennsylvania becomes the make-or-break state for both candidates," John Brabender told the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza.

That certainly invites the Romney campaign and its Super PAC allies to unload a ton of cash to dominate the TV airwaves in the Keystone State in hopes of delivering a knockout punch on April 24. A Quinnipiac University poll out this week showed Santorum's lead in his home state has dwindled down to six points as he heads into a three week stretch without any debates or intervening primary nights to inject new momentum into his bid.

[Related: Wisconsin, Maryland voters still mixed on GOP nominee]

However, after Romney's clean sweep in Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, a Santorum knockout is not required for Romney to take on the role of presumptive Republican nominee. And both Romney and President Barack Obama have shifted their attention, and their rhetoric, to November.

For all the positive talk from Romney about his private sector experience and Obama's boastful ticking through his first-term accomplishments before adoring and financially generous Democrats at fundraisers around the country, it became clear this week that the beginning stages of the general election battle will be largely presented through the negative frames each side is building around the other.

Romney has put forth a three-pronged characterization of President Obama aimed at sowing serious doubt among Americans about his stewardship of the country.  In Romney's telling, President Obama is an enemy of business and free enterprise willing to pile on more debt to fund a larger federal government, a failed leader who constantly attempts to assign blame for the country's economic woes, and (in an act of political jujitsu) a man who has lost touch with most Americans.

[Related: Obama assails Ryan budget as 'thinly veiled social Darwinism']

"It's enough to make you think that years of flying around on Air Force One, surrounded by an adoring staff of True Believers telling you what a great job you are doing, well, that might be enough to make you a little out of touch," Romney said last night in Milwaukee.

Romney's personal wealth has been a major target for the Obama campaign and its allies, who paint him as a candidate unable to relate to middle class Americans. In his Tuesday victory speech, Romney made clear he had no plans of ceding that ground to the president.

For his part, President Obama used his speech before publishers and editors at the annual Associated Press conference in Washington, D.C., Tuesday to frame Romney as interested in protecting the privileged class with lower taxes at the expense of decimating government programs upon which the elderly and the low-income rely and investments in education, energy and infrastructure.

"So we tried this theory out. And you would think that after the results of this experiment in trickle-down economics, after the results were made painfully clear, that the proponents of this theory might show some humility, might moderate their views a bit," President Obama said. "But that's exactly the opposite of what they've done. Instead of moderating their views even slightly, the Republicans running Congress right now have doubled down, and proposed a budget so far to the right it makes the Contract with America look like the New Deal," he added, and then went on to tie Romney to the House Republican budget.

[Related: Palin's advice for Romney: Don't be afraid to go 'rogue' with VP choice]

The Obama team has made clear it has no intention in letting up on the caricature of Romney as a car-elevator-owning, offshore-account-possessing man so rich he couldn't possibly understand the economic plight facing most of his fellow citizens. And Romney made clear Tuesday he's just as willing to go negative on the president.

It is through those opposing negative narratives, far more than either candidate's prescriptive positive vision for the future, that the general election contest between Romney and Obama will take shape.

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Romney proposes 28 percent top income tax rate (Reuters)

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$923,411: What Santorum Made in 2010, but Still Much Less than Romney (ContributorNetwork)

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