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Obama targets Romney

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WASHINGTON/MILWAUKEE

President Barack Obama attacked Mitt Romney directly on Tuesday for backing a controversial Republican budget plan, marking a shift into the general election as the former Massachusetts governor edged toward becoming his party’s presidential nominee.

Obama, a Democrat, rarely mentions the Republican front-runner by name, preferring to let him battle it out with rival Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator.

As Romney moves closer to taking on his party’s presidential mantle — he is expected to have well over half of the Republican delegates needed to win after three contests on Tuesday — Obama’s campaign has taken him on in an overt way.

The president weighed in himself on Tuesday, pounding Romney, a wealthy former private-equity executive, for supporting the Republican budget plan that would make stark cuts in Medicare and other programs for the poor and elderly.

“One of my potential opponents, Governor Romney, has said that he hoped a similar version of this plan from last year would be introduced as a bill on day one of his presidency,” Obama said in a speech to news executives.

“He said he’d be 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.”

In the midst of a lackluster recovery, economic issues such as the deficit, high unemployment and the rising cost of gasoline are likely to dominate the general election.

Obama’s campaign released an ad targeting Romney for supporting oil companies, which Romney promptly ridiculed — focusing his criticism squarely on the president, rather than his Republican rivals.

“So the president put an ad out yesterday, talking about gasoline prices and how high they are. And guess who he blamed? Me!” Romney said in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

“Maybe after I’m president I can take responsibility for things I might have done wrong. But this president doesn’t want to take responsibility for his mistakes.”

Romney leads in polls in Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington D.C., Tuesday’s contests in the grinding, months-long battle for the right to face Obama, a Democrat, in the Nov. 6 election.

A sweep of all three would underscore Romney’s growing strength and likely increase appeals from party leaders for Republicans to rally behind him, despite deep reservations among many conservatives suspicious about whether he is one of them.

Practically, winning all three contests would give Romney 95 more delegates and put him at well over half of the 1,144 needed to clinch the nomination at the party’s convention in August.

And it would set the tone for the next big date on the campaign calendar, April 24, when six states hold Republican presidential contests. Romney leads in five of them and plans to make an aggressive push in the sixth, Santorum’s home state of Pennsylvania. Romney travels there on Wednesday.

ROMNEY, SANTORUM BATTLE

Sensing the nomination is in sight, Romney has made no mention in recent days of Santorum or his other Republican rivals, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul.

Although Romney has locked up support from much of the Republican party establishment, he has struggled to win over strict conservatives, many of whom favor Santorum.

Sarah Palin, the conservative former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, said the nominating process could still veer away from the front-runner.

“Anything is still possible, there can still be a bit of a shakeup,” she said on NBC’s “Today” program.

Palin said whoever becomes the nominee — Romney or one of his rivals — would get the support of the Republican base.

“He (Romney) will be able to do that,” she said. “If not Romney, if one of the other GOP candidates happen to surpass Romney in the delegate count ... whomever will be able to coalesce, we will be able to coalesce around that nominee and make sure that voters understand they have a choice here.”

Wisconsin is the most closely watched race of the trio voting on Tuesday. Santorum, known for his sharply conservative views, has campaigned heavily in the state and led in the polls until ceding the lead to the Romney in the last week or so.

If he does win the nomination, Romney would face the challenge of defeating an incumbent president whose campaign operation is well-funded, organized and eager to pounce on any misstep.

Santorum wants to survive Wisconsin and the rest of April and move on to May, when the states that vote may be more favorable to him.

He would have to win an overwhelming percentage of the remaining delegates to win the nomination outright.

But Santorum seems to have a different strategy: Win enough delegates to deny outright victory to Romney. This would force Republicans to choose their candidate at a “brokered” convention in Tampa, a chaotic scenario that many political experts believe could be disastrous to the party’s hopes of ousting Obama.

“I would argue even if it ends up in a convention, that’s a positive thing for the Republican Party, that’s a positive thing for activating and energizing our folks heading into this fall election,” Santorum told reporters on Monday.

Trying to appeal to blue-collar voters, Santorum has held small campaign events in Wisconsin, frequently appearing in bowling alleys. He insists he is staying in the race and has been relentless in trying to brand Romney as a Massachusetts moderate who would govern little differently than Obama.

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