Romney seizes on spillover from VP debate to score foreign policy points against Obama

WASHINGTON – Republican Mitt Romney seized on spillover from the feisty vice-presidential debate to renew his attack Friday on the Obama administration’s foreign policy, trying to score points against the president and break ahead in the tight U.S. presidential contest.

With less than a month before the Nov. 6 election, Romney and President Barack Obama are essentially tied in the polls. Obama had been gaining momentum until his first debate with Romney last week, which the Republican was widely considered to have dominated.

Vice-President Joe Biden and Republican Paul Ryan tried to shake things loose in a combative give-and-take on Thursday night, during which they clashed on matters ranging from foreign policy to healthcare and the economy.

Romney’s argument Friday centred on a dispute over security at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that was overrun by terrorists who killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans last month.

Vice-President Joe Biden said during Thursday night’s debate that “we weren’t told” of an official request for more security at the diplomatic post before the attack occurred.

In fact, a State Department official testified before Congress on Wednesday that she had refused requests for more security in Benghazi because the department wanted to train Libyans for the task. Another U.S. official testified he had argued unsuccessfully for more security for weeks.

“The vice-president directly contradicted the sworn testimony of State Department officials,” Romney said, eager to stoke a controversy that has flared periodically since the attack on Sept. 11 “… American citizens have a right to know just what’s going on. And we’re going to find out.”

Obama had no campaign appearances during the day, leaving it to White House press secretary Jay Carney to defend Biden’s assertion. The spokesman rejected Romney’s claim of a contradiction. Biden “was speaking directly for himself and for the president. He meant the White House,” Carney said.

With his accusation, Romney once again pushed foreign policy to the forefront of a campaign dominated for more than a year by the economy, which has been painfully slow to recover from the worst recession in more than a half century.

The Republican challenger was campaigning in Virginia and then in Ohio — two states that are key in this election.

The U.S. president is not chosen according to the national popular vote but in state-by-state contests. That gives enormous importance to states such as Virginia and Ohio that are not locked in behind one or the other candidate. Ohio is perhaps the most important, a state that no Republican has lost but gone on to win the White House.

Biden was in Wisconsin, Ryan’s home state and one where polls give Obama a narrow lead. He did not mention Libya. Instead, he mocked Ryan for having said on Thursday night that a House budget proposal that he authored would not lead to drastic spending cuts in government healthcare for the elderly, education and other areas.

“Congressman Ryan saying his budget does not have spending cuts is like Gov. Romney standing in an unemployment line and saying, ‘I didn’t outsource you job, I offshored it,” he said, referring to a distinction Republicans sought to draw earlier in the campaign.

More than a week after Romney and Obama’s first debate, officials in both parties describe a race that has largely returned to the competitive situation in effect last summer, before the national political conventions and the emergence of a videotape in which Romney spoke dismissively of nearly half the country propelled the president to significant gains in the polls.

Now, many of the same surveys show a very tight race nationally and in most of the competitive states, although the president holds a small lead in public and private surveys in Ohio and Wisconsin.

Still struggling to blunt or reverse Romney’s rise in the polls, Obama’s campaign launched two new ads in several of the contested states.

The controversy over Libya flared as both Romney and Obama looked ahead to their second debate, set for next Tuesday in Hempstead, New York.

After being accused by some Democrats of failing to prepare adequately for last week’s encounter, Obama arranged for several days of rehearsals in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Romney was flying home to Massachusetts on Saturday so he, too, could get ready for an event likely to be watched by a television audience measured in the tens of millions.

The two men will hold their third and final debate on Oct. 22 in Boca Raton, Florida.