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US election 2012: Barack Obama and Mitt Romney accuse each other of being out of touch


Millionaire Mitt Romney who claims President Obama is out of touch
Photo: GETTY

A line has been drawn in the early stages of the battle between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the likely Republican challenger.

By Jon Swaine, Washington
4:50PM BST 08 Apr 2012

Mr Romney, a multimillionaire Harvard graduate, said the president is "out of touch". Mr Obama, a Harvard graduate and multimillionaire, says the same of his rival.

As Americans struggle to recover from the country's economic collapse, their likely choices for the White House are going to eyebrow-raising lengths to prove that the other does not feel the public's pain.

Mr Romney said this week that after "years of flying around on Air Force One, surrounded by an adoring staff of true believers," Mr Obama was "a little out of touch" with regular folk.

A smirking Mr Obama later noted in a speech that the former Massachusetts governor called a swingeing Republican austerity plan "marvellous" – "a word you don't often hear generally".

The message was clear: the candidate with a $250 million (£160 million) fortune and old-fashioned manner, who tied the family dog to the roof of their car for a drive to Canada, is detached.

It is unclear whether voters will believe that Mr Obama, who lives in a 132-room mansion and has an executive pastry chef, remains at one with the middle class. In the first year of his presidency he and his wife Michelle earned $5.5 million – about 110 times the average American household's income.

However Mr Romney's claim this week that the president spent "too much time at Harvard" to understand voters will take some outdoing for audacity.

While Mr Obama studied there for three years, Mr Romney managed four – before moving to a town just 15 minutes away, where he raised his family.

After an Easter hiatus, Mr Obama will on Tuesday embark on a tour of swing states to make the case for his "Buffett Rule", forcing millionaires pay a minimum 20 per cent income tax.

Mr Romney, who at the weekend was seen bodyboarding near his beachside home in California, will work towards wrapping up the Republican nomination contest in Pennsylvania later this month.

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2012

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/9193177/US-election-2012-Barack-Obama-and-Mitt-Romney-accuse-each-other-of-being-out-of-touch.html [with comments]

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