In-focus

World

Romney's running mate campaigns against Obama in Iowa

Dunya News

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney sent his new running mate to Iowa on Monday.

Romney sent Paul Ryan in Iowa to test his campaign mettle against Barack Obama as the president began a bus tour of the battleground state that launched his successful run for the White House four years ago.Notably, Romney was not taking Rep. Paul Ryan with him to Florida, where the vice presidential candidates plans to overhaul government health care for the elderly was not likely to find a welcoming audience. The key swing state is heavily populated by older Americans who rely on the Medicare program.Three months from Election Day, polls find Obama with a narrow lead over Romney in a race defined by a weak economy and high unemployment.Ryan brings to the Romney campaign an austere message on government spending, one designed over the coming decades to diminish the US debt.Ryan, a favorite of the small-government, low-tax tea party wing of the Republican party, figures to play prominently in Obamas message.Attending campaign fundraisers in Chicago on Sunday, the president called Ryan the ideological leader of the Republican Party.He is a decent man, he is a family man, he is an articulate spokesman for Governor Romneys vision, but it is a vision that I fundamentally disagree with, Obama said in his first public comments about Ryans selection.Looking to define the Republican tickets views on Medicare, the Obama campaign released an online video Monday featuring seniors in Florida talking about how Ryans proposed changes to the popular health care program could affect them. The video aims to portray the Romney-Ryan ticket as a threat to Medicare and Obama as its protector.Romney tried Sunday to distance himself from his running mates budget plan, making clear that his ideas rule, not Ryans.He walked a careful line Sunday as he campaigned with Ryan in North Carolina and Wisconsin. He singled out his running mates work to make sure we can save Medicare, but he never said whether he embraced Ryans austere plan himself.An enthusiastic Romney seemed to feed off the energy as the pair faced an estimated 10,000 supporters in Wisconsin, where Ryan returned to his home state for the first time in his new role.The US president is not chosen by nationwide popular vote but in state-by-state contests. With most of the 50 states already solidly in the column of either Romney or Obama, the candidates are campaigning hard in the handful of states that do not reliably vote for one party or another.Obama will showcase the powers of incumbency Monday as he tours a farm and discusses ways of addressing the countrys worst drought in decades. White House officials said the president planned to direct the Agriculture.Department to buy up to $170 million worth of meat and poultry to provide relief to farmers and ranchers.