Romney tries to reboot flagging campaign

With momentum on President Barack Obama’s side, Mitt Romney sought to explain to voters more clearly what he would do as president as he looked to right his struggling campaign and ease worries in Republican circles about its state seven weeks before election day.

“My plan is to help the middle class,” the Republican nominee says in a new TV ad in which he promises to cut the deficit, balance the budget, reduce spending and help small business. Also, he adds: “We’ll add 12m new jobs in four years.”

It was one of two new commercials he was launching in the most competitive states — the other assails Obama as bad for middle- class families — while also re-focusing his campaign appearances on his previously released five-point economic plan and starting a new effort to try to narrow Obama’s advantage with Hispanic voters.

In addition, Romney was preparing to make a series of speeches aimed at offering voters a more concrete outline of his plans for the country and he’s spending a significant amount of time preparing for next months’ series of debates, mindful that the face-to-face meetings may be his last best hope of overtaking Obama.

The emphasis on Romney’s plans for the future comes after a week in which Republican veterans of presidential campaigns publicly implored the GOP nominee to give voters a clearer sense of how he would govern, saying that simply castigating Obama wouldn’t be enough to win. The new effort also follows a series of polls that show Obama with an edge nationally and in key states, and amid reports of infighting at Romney’s Boston- based campaign.

With griping in GOP circles mounting, Romney and his advisers spent the weekend in Boston hashing out a plan to try to shift the dynamics of the race before the first debate on Oct 3.

After a turbulent week that saw Romney stumbling to respond to an ongoing crisis in the Middle East, he chose to try to return to his comfort zone — the economy — and his argument that only he can solve high unemployment given his decades of work in the private sector.

Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, was to emphasise that pitch this week while also zeroing in on the debt and deficit.

Romney, for his part, was starting the week with a speech yesterday to the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles, as he looks to narrow Obama’s advantage with these Democratic-leaning voters in key battleground states.

The campaign was also working to counter the notion of a campaign in disarray after a weekend story on the Politico website detailed infighting among Romney’s senior staffers. Campaign advisers worked to downplay tensions and insisted the campaign is still on track.

“Obama’s entire foreign policy is in flames. The economy is terrible. Let’s get a little distance from the convention,” top strategist Stuart Stevens wrote in an email on Sunday morning, seeking to counter the notion of a campaign in a downward spiral.

It’s been a tough few weeks for Romney.

Trouble began with Clint Eastwood’s rambling conversation with a chair on the final night of the Republican convention, right before Romney’s keynote address omitted the war in Afghanistan or a thanks to the troops serving there.

Then violence erupted in Egypt and Libya, prompting Romney to issue a statement criticising the Obama administration before it was known an American ambassador had died in Libya. Romney doubled back on his criticism in a news conference the next day. That drew criticism from both Democrats and Republicans alike.