Flexing his financial muscle, Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, released 15 new television ads across eight battleground states — a firm reminder that the Republican has more cash on hand to toss around than President Obama heading in the final months of the campaign.
The television blitz, titled “A Better Future,” features footage from Mr. Romney’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., where he channels the “Are you better off?” message that Ronald Reagan employed on his way to defeating Democrat Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential race.
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“This president can ask us to be patient. This president can tell us it was someone else’s fault,” Mr. Romney says in the ads. “But this president cannot tell us that you’re better off today than when he took office.”
Mr. Obama’s campaign spent heavily throughout the summer, as it looked to define Mr. Romney for voters before he could tap into his general election funds, which he could not use until his official coronation as the party’s standard bearer.
The campaign said the effort aims to show “how we’re not better off under President Obama, and also show what Mitt Romney will do as president to create jobs and spur economic growth.”
The ads are running in New Hampshire and Iowa, where Mr. Romney plans to campaign on Friday, as well as in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia — focusing in on how Mr. Romney’s plan will affect each individual state.
The spots lay out Mr. Romney’s vows to push back against reductions in the projected growth of military spending, to repeal excessive job-killing regulations and to improve the housing market.
The ads also make the case that Mr. Obama’s economic and trade policies with China “have destroyed thousands of jobs,” that his policies on coal, gas and oil are “crushing energy and manufacturing” and that “there is a prairie fire of debt that grows over $3 billion each day” on the Democrat’s watch.
