Bus Tour - Pronged Tax Attack On His Policy And Payments - The Washington Post

Democrats say both public and private polls suggest the double-barreled focus on taxes is giving Obama an edge in the race. The strategy also gives the president an avenue to campaign on the economy the top issue for voters while steering clear of talking about the nation s high unemployment.

A sign the strategy might be working: Romney said both campaigns would benefit if they agreed that attacks based upon business or family or taxes or things of that nature that this is just this is diversion. Instead, he said in an interview with NBC News, he would prefer to have a setting in which he and Obama would only talk about issues and differences in their positions.

Three months before the election, national polls show Obama with a slight lead. And Romney will spend the coming weeks starting Saturday with a bus tour trying to change the trajectory of the race. In recent days, he s gone on the offensive by criticizing Obama on welfare, making his own play for middle class voters, after months of taking heat from Democrats.

Republicans reject the notion that Romney s $5 trillion tax cut proposal could hurt him in the fall. But some party operatives acknowledge that he is being damaged by declining to release more than two years of his own tax returns.

I do think this has hurt the governor a little bit, said Steve Lombardo, a Republican pollster who worked on Romney s 2008 presidential campaign. Ironically, it s really less about rich guy and more about transparency and honesty. So Team Romney has to find a way if they re not going to release, which I don t think they will they have to find a way to demonstrate honesty and transparency, attributes that people take very seriously in selecting a president.

Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist, said the tax criticism has really seeped into the American psyche and is affecting the way voters view Romney.

They re thinking, this is not somebody who is going to fight for me. This is not somebody who even understands the world I live in, said Cardona, who was a senior adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton s presidential campaign four years ago.

The Obama campaign ramped up its criticism of Romney s refusal to release his tax returns Thursday with a new television advertisement that without evidence raises the prospect that the GOP challenger paid no taxes some years.

Did Romney pay 10 percent in taxes? 5 percent? Zero? We don t know, the narrator says. The ad will run in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio while Romney is on a bus tour through those states starting Saturday.