Obama campaign continues to hammer at Romney economic record

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney’s pledges from his gubernatorial campaign a decade ago are the key sound bites in new attack ads from President Obama’s reelection campaign, which aim to undermine the Republican nominee’s economic credentials.

Two new ads from Obama for America -- “Mosaic” and “Come and Go” -- will air in the same nine battleground states the campaign has saturated with television spots.

“Mosaic” opens with Romney pledging to cut taxes before a narrator interjects that the only taxes that went down were for “millionaires like himself.” Meanwhile his administration enacted more than 1,000 fee hikes that hit the middle class, the ad claims.

“Romney economics didn’t work then and won’t work now,” the spot concludes.

“Come and Go” links two separate Obama campaign attacks, on Romney’s gubernatorial tenure and his time running Bain Capital. The ad notes that in 2002, as he is today, Romney touted his business record, saying, “I know how jobs are created.”

But as a “corporate raider,” the ad states, he “shipped jobs to China and Mexico.” And then as Massachusetts governor, he outsourced state jobs to India.

The narrative about “Romney economics” has been a consistent attack from the Chicago-based campaign since the former governor wrapped up the GOP nomination.

“Mitt Romney still doesn’t have a jobs plan -- instead relying on the same failed ideas that he implemented in Massachusetts,” the campaign said in a statement.

Romney campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul called the ads “misleading” and said they were “the latest effort by the Obama campaign to distract attention from the president’s failed policies that have led to high unemployment and falling incomes.”

“As much as they try, President Obama and his campaign cannot run from the president’s failed record and failed big government policies that have moved our country in the wrong direction,” Saul added.

michael.memoli@latimes.com