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| Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney greets his vice presidential running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., at Port Columbus International Airport in Columbus, Ohio, Friday, Oct. 12, 2012. |
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Broadening his attack on administration foreign policy, Mitt Romney accused Vice President Joe Biden on Friday of "doubling down on denial" in a dispute over security at a diplomatic post in Libya that was overrun by terrorists who killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.
"The vice president directly
contradicted the sworn testimony of State Department officials," the
Republican presidential candidate said, eager to stoke a controversy
that has flared periodically since the attack on Sept.
11 "... American
citizens have a right to know just what's going on. And we're going to
find out."
President Barack Obama had no
campaign appearances during the day, leaving it to White House press
secretary Jay Carney to defend Biden's assertion in a campaign debate
Thursday night that "we weren't told" of an official request for more
security at the site.
The spokesman rejected
Romney's claim of a contradiction. Biden "was speaking directly for
himself and for the president. He meant the White House," Carney said.
With
his accusation, Romney once again pushed foreign policy to the
forefront of a campaign dominated for more than a year by the economy,
which has been painfully slow to recover from the worst recession in
more than a half century.
The Republican
challenger was campaigning across a pair of battleground states during
the day, first in Virginia, which has 13 electoral votes, and then in
Ohio, which has 18 electoral votes and where running mate Paul Ryan
joined him. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the White House.
Biden
was in Wisconsin, Ryan's home state, and one where polls give Obama a
narrow lead despite a debate performance last week that was so poor it
fueled a Republican comeback nationally and sent shudders through the
ranks of Democratic partisans.
More than a
week later, officials in both parties describe a race that has largely
returned to the competitive situation in effect last summer, before the
national political conventions and the emergence of a videotape in which
Romney spoke dismissively of nearly half the country propelled the
president to significant gains in the polls.
Now,
many of the same surveys show a very tight race nationally and in most
of the competitive states, although the president holds a small lead in
public and private surveys in Ohio and Wisconsin.
Still
struggling to blunt or reverse Romney's rise in the polls, Obama's
campaign launched two new ads in several of the contested states. One
shows the Republican being asked in a "60 Minutes" interview if it's
fair that he paid federal tax of about 14 percent last year on income of
$20 million, while a $50,000 wage-earner paid a higher rate. "I think
it's the right way to encourage economic growth," he says, and the
narrator adds:
"Lower tax rates for him than us. Is that the way to grow
America?"
The second commercial appears aimed
at recent comments Romney made suggesting he might not make opposition
to abortion a priority. "Maybe you're wondering what to believe about
Mitt Romney," it says, then shows him pledging to eliminate federal
funding for Planned Parenthood.
With control
of the Senate and all 435 House seats at stake along with the White
House, outside groups that spent months stockpiling money were now in a
race to spend it.
American Crossroads, a group
backed by former White House strategist Karl Rove, announced this week
it was spending $7.4 million in the presidential race, while an allied
organization, Crossroads GPS, put down $4 million to help Republicans in
five Senate races and another $8.1 million for 11 House campaigns - a
total of nearly $20 million.
Some candidates seemed to be showing signs of campaign fatigue.
In
a California House race between two Democrats, Rep. Brad Sherman seized
the shoulder of Rep.
Howard Berman during a debate, yanked him toward
his chest and shouted, "You want to get into this?" The two men stood
nose to nose before a sheriff's deputy moved between them.
"I should not have done that," conceded Sherman, 57, on Friday.
Said
his 71-year-old rival: "It was like in the eighth grade, `You want to
go over to the park on the corner and fight this out?'"
The
two Democrats are pitted against each other because California advances
the top two vote-getters in a primary to the general election,
regardless of their party.
In the presidential
race, Romney began the campaign week with a speech that criticized the
Obama administration for showing a lack of leadership around the globe,
particularly in the Middle East.
And he chose to end it with a direct challenge to Biden's candor about the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
"When
the vice president of the United States directly contradicts the
testimony, sworn testimony of State Department officials, American
citizens have a right to know just what's going on," he said, referring
to a hearing earlier in the week in a Republican-controlled House
committee.
One official testified before the
panel that he had been criticized for seeking additional security at the
facility. A second said she personally had turned down requests for
more protection at the facility in Benghazi.
Carney
said, that despite Romney's allegation, there was no contradiction
between what Biden said and what the congressional committee had been
told.
"Requests for individual personnel at
the thousands of facilities ... are not adjudicated at the White House,"
the spokesman said. "They are decided at the State Department."
Biden,
campaigning in LaCrosse, Wis., did not mention Libya on the day after
the debate. Instead, he mocked Ryan for having said on Thursday night
that a House budget proposal that he authored would not lead to drastic
spending cuts in Medicare, education and other areas.
"Congressman
Ryan saying his budget does not have spending cuts is like Gov. Romney
standing in an unemployment line and saying, `I didn't outsource you
job, I offshored it," he said, referring to a distinction Republicans
sought to draw earlier in the campaign.
The
controversy over Libya flared as both Romney and Obama looked ahead to
their second debate, set for next Tuesday in Hempstead, N.Y.
After
being accused by some Democrats of failing to prepare adequately for
last week's encounter, Obama arranged for several days of rehearsals in
Williamsburg, Va.
Romney was flying home to
Massachusetts on Saturday so he, too, could get ready for an event
likely to be watched by a television audience measured in the tens of
millions.
The two men will hold their third and final debate on Oct. 22 in Boca Raton, Fla.
