Obama seeks to divide Americans, says Romney

TAMPA, Florida

Mitt Romney (C), the US Republican presidential candidate, speaks alongside his running mate Paul Ryan (R), at a campaign rally in Powell, Ohio. EPA photo

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has accused his rival President Barack Obama of running a campaign built on “anger and divisiveness”.

“I would suggest that that’s a campaign of anger and divisiveness,” Romney said, referring to Obama’s campaign in an interview with U.S. TV channel Fox News, BBC reported. “That’s the kind of divisiveness that I think Americans recognize and I think it’s one of the reasons why his campaign, despite spending massively more than our campaign, hasn’t gained the traction that he would have expected.”
Romney said Democrats were now seeking to tie him to the remarks by embattled congressman Todd Akin, who ignited a firestorm by saying that women’s bodies can prevent pregnancies in cases of “legitimate rape.” Romney called on a congressman to abandon his U.S. Senate bid, but the congressman has refused to heed calls to step down from Republicans who fear his comments about rape have threatened the party’s bid to gain control of Congress in November.

Isaac overshadows Romney

The Republicans are due this week to nominate Romney as their candidate in November’s presidential elections. However, tropical Storm Isaac threatened to steal the media spotlight from Romney and overshadow the all-important convention that will crown him as the official nominee. Yesterday was supposed to be the raucous kick-off to four days of carefully choreographed political theater designed to imprint Romney’s image upon the American consciousness as the potential savior of the flagging U.S. economy.

Instead, after party officials scrapped the first day of events due to the threat posed by Isaac, a symbolic 10-minute session will be held at the Tampa convention center before the gavel adjourns proceedings until the following day. That procedure will now take place on Aug. 28 after the first day’s program was repackaged into a tighter three-day schedule due to the storm. The National Hurricane Center predicted Isaac would grow to a Category 2 hurricane over the warm Gulf of Mexico and possibly hit late today somewhere along a stretch that runs to the edge of the Florida.